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lategories in Contemporai 
Psychology 

:udy in the Psychology of Thinking 




A DISSERTATION 

SirBMITTED TO THE FACULTY 

OF THE 

GRADUATE SCHOOL 01 ARTS AND LITERATURE 

IN CANDIDACY FOR Till- hi GREE 01 

DOCTOR 01 PHILOSOPin 

DEPARTMEN1 OF PSYCHOLOGY 



CARL RAHN 



'ubli-hed u> No 67 ol the MoNOGfl %i hs 01 

1913 




OLOGICAL RK • i » v. 



Zbc Tllntversits ot Gbtcago 

FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER 



The Relation of Sensation to other 

Categories in Contemporary 

Psychology 

A Study in the Psychology of Thinking 



A DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY 

OF THE 

GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND LITERATURE 

IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF 

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 



CARL RAHN 



(Published as No. 67 of the Monographs of the Psychological Review) 

1913 



<$\~ 



1914 




TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I The problem of the psychology of thinking and the 

structural and functional point of view I 

II The categories of content and activity in the system 

of Stumpf 2 

III Stumpf's criteria for distinguishing between Funk- 

tion (activity) and phenomenal content 7 

IV Stumpf's example of independent variation of Funk- 

tion while the phenomenal sensory content re- 
mains constant • . 7 

V James versus Stumpf ; James contending that the act 

of analysis modifies the sensory experience 10 

VI Comparison of the usually recognized sensory "at- 
tributes" in the two cases ....•• 11 

VII "Clearness" as an attribute of Titchener's "Sensa- 
tion," of Stumpf's "Funktion" of Wundt's "Com- 
pound" • • 16 

VIII Titchener's definition of "sensation element" 19 

IX Methods of abstracting the "attributes and of assign- 
ing them to various "elements" 22 

X Interrelation of the attributes of the sensory ele- 
ments : their "inseparability" ; quality as the 
"body" of the sensation ; their difference in atten- 

tional clearness 25 

XI The status of clearness as an attribute of sensation 
anomalous in that two different degrees of clear- 
ness are possible within the "same" elementary 

sensation 29 

XII Clearness apparently unlike other "attributes" in an- 
other respect: not all degrees of clearness can be 
attended to, "inspected," without changing the 
"process" 31 

XIII Clearness as an attribute of activity, of Funktion, that 

is given, according to Stumpf, "by another direc- 
tion of consciousness" than are the "sensations" or 
their "attributes" 35 

XIV Titchener on the activity aspect of consciousness .... 39 
XV The difference in the direction of consciousness, by 

means of which attributes of experience are ap- 
prehended, as a basis for distinguishing ultimate 

categories 41 

XVI "Mode of behavior" of various aspects of conscious- 
ness when attended to, as a possible basis of classi- 
fication of psychological categories. Application 
to the categories of (1) Funktion or "attitude," 

(2) percept and idea, (3) sensation 44 

XVII The distinction between the actual "feel" of an atti- 
tude and the sensory precipitant 45 

XVIII The differentiation of "stimulus" and "meaning" as- 
pects of percepts and ideas 48 



XIX The "behavior" of the "meaning" of percept and idea 

under the influence of the introspective purpose. . 49 
XX The behavior of the sensation when attended to. . . . 52 

XXI The behavior of the "attribute" 59 

XXII The modification of consciousness under the influ- 
ence of the psychological purpose as the opening 
of an important field for psychology 65 

XXIII The rise of the category of a static structural sensa- 

tion element. The inadequacy of such a category 
as shown by the introduction of the new "non- 
sensory," "imageless" categories 67 

XXIV "Sensation" in process of re-definition : Kulpe, Angell, 

Watt, Meumann 74 

XXV Kiilpe's distinction between "sensation" and "con- 
sciousness, of sensation" 81 

XXVI The sensation of the "inseparable attributes," that 
"never means," is found inadequate for the pur- 
pose of describing what the psychologist notes in 
the actual thought process. The rise of new 

categories 83 

XXVII Kiilpe's abstrakte Vorstellung; Stumpf's Gebilde; 

Biihler's Gedanke; Woodworth's percept-quality 84 

XXVIII Biihler's criterion of the "sensory" 88 

XXIX Biihler on the fortuity and irrelevancy of much sen- 
sory content 90 

XXX The relation of the sensory and non-sensory factors 

in Biihler's system. . . 92 

XXXI Locke's "idea of substance" as the precursor of some 
contemporary and "non-sensory" categories: 
Biihler's "Intention" Schultze's "pseudo-sub- 
stance," T. V. Moore's "something." Woodworth's 

"thinghood" 94 

XXXII A psychological analysis of the rise of the philo- 
sophic problem of the Ding an sich. The "that- 
ness" of the sensation as a special case of the 
general problem of "objective reference" 101 

XXXIII "Sensations" as facts of actual consciousness are not 

to be stated as ultimates of fixed character but as 
developments within the individual's experience. . 104 

XXXIV The "sensation element" and the "thought element" 

in relation to the conception of consciousness as a 
somewhat capable of a "static analysis." The phil- 
osophic antecedents of the two elements. The dif- 
ference in the number of classes of cognitive 
elements as being due to a difference in methods 

of procedure 108 

XXXV Cognitive consciousness as re-presentative and as 

representative 115 

XXXVI The relation of "reection" to conscious processes.. 120 
XXXVII Conclusion 125 



PREFACE 

These pages do not pretend to be a survey of the work done 
upon the problem of the psychology of thinking, such as has 
been given to us in Professor Titchener's admirable "Lectures". 
They are rather an attempt to apply the method of immanent 
criticism in searching out the implications of the category of 
Sensation as it appears in contemporary discussions of the prob- 
lem. This method was wittingly adopted — in spite of limita- 
tions which it imposed and in spite of the difficulties which it 
offered from the point of view of formal presentation — on 
account of the promise it held of leading the inquirer into the 
heart of the problem of the psychology of thinking. 

If this paper should eventually be found to contain any con- 
tribution to the problem, it will be obvious at once that the stim- 
ulus which gave rise to it lies in earlier contributors to the 
subject, and it is a pleasure to acknowledge my indebtedness not 
only to those whose contributions have been critically examined 
in these pages, but also to the many others not specifically dwelt 
upon, among them Marbe, Messer, Orth, Mayer, Kakise, Ach, 
Schwiete, and finally Binet who grappled persistently with the 
problem, and thought profoundly concerning it, for many years. 

Personally, I am indebted to Professor Oswald Kiilpe for his 
many courtesies extended to me while the immediate problem 
of this paper was forming in my mind during my stay at the 
University of Bonn; to Professor C. Judson Herrick for his 
cheerful readiness to discuss questions of neurology that arose 
persistently during the course of the inquiry ; to Professor Harvey 
Carr and Dr. Stella B. Vincent for the helpful suggestions that 
grew out of our pleasant conferences. It is to Professor James 
R. Angell that I am beholden for constant encouragement in the 
pursuit of this task, and for the inspiration that lies in the ideal 
of scholarly independence of thought. C. R. 



It is the purpose of this paper to consider an aspect of psycho- 
logical inquiry as it has been developed especially by a number of 
workers both in America and Germany. These latter are com- 
monly referred to as the Denkpsychologen, yet it would be 
misleading to suppose that their work is of significance only 
for the psychology of the logical processes. Nay, it would affect 
our whole conception of psychic process and psychic content. 
When we seek to correlate it with the points of view that are 
familiar to us in America, we note at first blush that in method 
it has much in common with so-called structural psychology, 
whilst the problems which it attacks and the questions which it 
seeks to answer are conceived in a spirit closely akin to the temper 
of the functionalist. To elucidate and qualify this statement 
will be part of the burden of the following pages, and it is the 
earnest hope of the writer that they may contribute in some 
measure to finding the common ground of these various 
"schools" in their pursuit of a common task. 

Without further introduction we shall proceed to an exam- 
ination of the sort of problems the movement in question 
proposes to itself, and its methods of attacking them. As we 
go along let us note bit by bit the meaning which the various 
writers put into the psychological terms that they employ. For 
by doing this it will be easier to note in how far any differences 
which may be found ultimately to exist between the various 
schools, are due to differences in point of view as to the nature 
of consciousness, or to differences in methods of obtaining and 
interpreting data. Wherever in this paper we are using quotations 
from the authors under discussion, we shall, when necessary, 
use the German or French terms of the original, otherwise we 
shall seek to give an adequate translation in English, sacrificing, 
where needful, elegance of diction to accuracy of rendering. 



2 CARL RAHN 

II 

Instead of launching upon an historical account of the work 
on the thought processes in its specifically experimental phases, 
we shall consider first a treatise by Stumpf, entitled Erschein- 
ungen und psychische Funktionen, which partakes primarily of 
the nature of a theoretical exposition of a consistent point of 
view — a programme for giving context to problems, rather than 
a completely fulfilled and grounded system. It therefore lends 
itself admirably also to our purposes, for it gives a setting in 
the light of which the discussion of the more specific experimental 
efforts can be more fully appreciated. 

Let us consider what Stumpf alleges he finds on turning to 
the study of consciousness. For him the total content, the 
"given" of consciousness, falls into three groups. ( i ) There are 
the phenomena, the Erscheinnngen, which correspond closely to 
the sensation, the image, and, tentatively, the simple affective 
elements of current structural psychology. (2) Introspection, 
for Stumpf, further reveals a consciousness of psychic activities, 
psychische Funktionen, of which we may be directly aware, and 
the consciousness of which cannot be reduced to sensation and 
affective elements. Willing, emotion, judging, conceiving, to 
name only a few, are processes of which we are immediately 
aware : they are given in the same indefinable consciousness and 
in the same sense in which sensations and feelings are given. 
(3) Then there are the relations, Verh'dltnisse, which constitute 
the third type of given. These relations exist, a, between the 
psychic elements of sensation, image and feeling, which Stumpf 
comprehends under the term Erscheinungen — a word which we 
shall render in the English as phenomena. These relations 
are not something that is added to phenomena by our minds 
through the operation of mental activities upon the sensory or 
affective content — no, they are conceived by Stumpf to be "given" 
in consciousness in the same sense in which sensations and 
feelings are given. They belong to the material with which 
psychic activities operate, but do not come under the head of 
psychic activities, nor are they products of these. 49 Another 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 3 

class of relations, b, is composed of those between phenomena 
and Funktionen, and between Funktionen themselves. 52 These 
three categories, then, the phenomena, the psychic Funktionen, 
and the relations, constitute for Stumpf the immediately given 
of consciousness. We shall have occasion, in another connection, 
to refer to a fourth category, the "structures" (Gebilde), which 
Stumpf does not, however, regard as being "immediately given" 
in the same sense as the other three. 63 

For Stumpf the immediately given (das unmittelbar Gegebene) 
is that which strikes one immediately as matter-in-fact (was 
als Tatsache unmittelbar einleuchtet) . That which is to make 
this immediate appeal as matter-of-fact must be such that it 
can come within awareness. ( Was als Tatsache unmittelbar einr- 
leuchten soil, muss wahrnehmbar sein). 51 It is our purpose to 
note the implications of this conception of the immediately given 
and to see in how far Stumpf adheres to it in the upbuilding of 
his psychological system, especially with reference to his treat- 
ment of the presence of phenomena and activities in consciousness. 
It is the content-character of these two factors, the "givenness" 
of sensation and affective elements, i. e. of phenomena (Erschein- 
ungen), on the one hand, and of psychic activities on the other, 
that shall engage our attention for the present, and we will leave 
the discussion of the presence of relational elements in conscious- 
ness, which is not an unfamiliar doctrine, for later consideration. 

It is hardly necessary to expatiate on what Stumpf may mean 
by saying that Erscheinungen, sensory and affective elements 
of the content of consciousness, are immediately given. It is 
simply the structuralistic doctrine that under certain conditions we 
may become aware of redness and blueness, of the tones that 
make up a clang, of sweetness, of pressure and cold sensations, — 
that we may become aware of these as parts of the mass of 
conscious experience of any moment. His classification of 
phenomenal elements is as follows: a, the sensation contents 
(Inhalte der Sinnesempfindung) , including the spatial extensity 
and distribution of visual and contact impressions, — tentatively 
also temporal duration and sequence; b, memory images 
(Gedachtnisbilder) , the 'merely imaged' colors, tones, etc. 



4 CARL RAHN 

Stumpf would leave out of consideration for the time being the 
classification of the pleasure-pain elements involved in sensory 
processes, on account of their still questionable status, though 
he is willing to see them subordinated under the head of phenom- 
ena, not as attributes of these, but as a special class. 49 It is not 
the classification of the phenomenal elements that shall interest 
us most, but rather their status with reference to the whole of 
consciousness and their relation to what Stumpf calls the Funk- 
tionen, that constitute for him another group of psychic givens. 

Psychic activities (psychische Funktionen, Akte, Erlebnisse, 
Zustande) are such experiences as the awareness of phenomena, 
the combination of phenomena into complexes, the formation of 
concepts, apprehending and judging, desiring, willing and emo- 
tional states. 50 52 Funktion is here not used in the sense of a 
result attained through a process, as when we say that circula- 
tion is a function of the expansion and contraction of the heart, 
but in the sense of an activity, of a process, in the sense in which 
the contraction of the heart is an organic function. It is in 
the former sense that Stumpf believes himself to be justified in 
interpreting the term function as used by some American psychol- 
ogists, such as Dewey. 50 Whether such an interpretation is 
correct is questionable; yet his own use of the term Funktion is 
brought out by his reference : the Funktionen are the activity 
phases of consciousness, of which we may become immediately 
aware. In this, Stumpf believes, his use of the term differs 
from that of Dewey. In order to differentiate the two uses of 
the term in these pages we shall use the German form when the 
term is used in Stumpf's sense, and the English form when we 
refer to the meaning connected with the term by the American 
functionalists. Limiting ourselves to a discussion of the psycho- 
logical uses of the term, we note the following with reference to 
the different shades of meaning connected with it. Both Stumpf 
and the American functionalists use the term with reference to 
the activity aspect of consciousness. But where such psychologists 
as Stumpf seek to understand this activity aspect by considering 
the psychic life by itself, the functionalist seeks to do justice 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 5 

to the process aspect by considering consciousness with reference 
to a biological setting. 5 Stumpf looks inward and there in con- 
sciousness is a complex of sensory elements, let us say, which 
together constitute the object of regard. For Stumpf it is a 
psychic Funktion, an activity of which we may become immed- 
iately aware, that is operative in binding together these elements 
into a figure, a rhythm, or a melody. Or again, given the same 
object, in terms of the same sensory content, we may at one time 
take a positive volitional attitude toward it, at another time a 
negative one. 63 The difference in the two states, then, is not a 
difference in the sensory content of consciousness, but a differ- 
ence in the Funktionen involved. It is the Funktion as it is 
immediately given in consciousness, that, as a part of the pattern 
of consciousness, constitutes the difference in the pattern in the 
two cases. There is, to be sure a complication with other Funk- 
tionen, says Stumpf, intellectual and emotional, but it is important 
only to note that it is not the phenomenal content that is different 
in the two cases, but the Funktionen that operate upon that content. 
With Stumpf, therefore, the category of Funktion is a structural 
category insofar as it is a content among other contents, though 
he would restrict the use of the term content (Inhalt), to the 
phenomena (Erscheinungen) , whereas the Funktionen are acts, 
of which we may become aware, which may be perceived by 
directing attention in "another way". Yet on page 15 of his 
monograph the Funktionen are referred to as contents. And like 
these others they, too, are "immediately given", though different 
in kind. In this sense, says Stumpf, there has been a discussion 
of awareness and perception of psychic Funktionen ever since 
Locke and Leibnitz, to say nothing of earlier thinkers. "These 
writers deny that the consciousness of seeing can be reduced to 
memory phenomena accompanying the color phenomena, memory 
images representing the organ of sight, etc. Still less are such 
interpretations possible in the case of the consciousness of judging 
and willing. They are convinced that they apprehend psychic 
activity in the very process itself, whereas colors and tones are 
apprehended merely as contents of an act of awareness, (Wahr- 



6 CARL RAHN 

nehmungsakt) , that is, of a particular class of psychic Funktionen. 
According to this view the phenomenal content and the act are 
interrelated in a manner still to be described, but are not reducible 
one to the other. . . . It is to be borne in mind that the assertion 
of the awareness of psychic Funktionen as Funktionen does not 
necessarily include a denial of unconscious psychic Funktionen."** 6 
Thus Stumpf's conception of Funktion has its rise. We have 
said that he looks inward and there in consciousness he discerns 
sensory and feeling content on the one hand, and "acts" which 
operate with these, on the other. Contrasted with this mode of 
procedure, the so-called functional psychologist looks at con- 
sciousness with reference to the life-setting of the individual. He 
tries to understand what function consciousness serves in the 
total life-process, as it is represented in the adaptation of the 
individual form to its environment. He asks : What does a 
given conscious experience do in the adaptive process, and how 
does it do it? 6 It is here that his conception of psychic function 
has had its rise. It considers, say a given image content, from the 
point of view of the function which it serves in some phase of 
adaptation involving consciousness. Examples of such phases 
are experiences like perceiving, judging, willing and emotional 
states. Introspectively, however, the setting in which the givgn 
image appears in these phases of adaptive activity, need not 
necessarily reveal anything at the periphery of the field of con- 
sciousness that is qualitatively different in kind from the sensory 
content of the image which is at the focus of attention and the 
affective elements associated with it. If the question of the 
awareness of process should become a problem for the function- 
alist, say in the case of judgment, he need not necessarily look for 
it as being given in consciousness in terms of mental texture other 
than that already known to him in sensation and affection. 
Having thus briefly sketched the essential features of the two 
points of view, we shall leave further comparison for the present, 
and return to a discussion of Stumpf's conception of the relation 
between two of his categories of psychical givens, the Erschcin- 
ungen and the Funktionen. 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 7 

III 

The difference between Erscheinungen and Funktionen, says 
Stumpf, is most striking. "No predicate of the one, unless it be 
that of duration, can be attributed to the other. Nor do the 
Funktionen possess intensity in the same sense as do tones and 
odors." They have their own peculiar attributes, "the clearness 
of awareness, the evidence of judgments, degrees of generality 
in the case of conception. If in the case of the emotional Funk- 
tionen there should be found somewhat analogous to the intensity 
peculiar to sensory impressions, one need not deny it, but then we 
have to deal merely with an analogy, and not with an intensity in 
the same sense of the word as in the case of sensation." 54 

Two criteria for distinguishing between Erscheinungen and 
Funktionen are given by Stumpf. (1) Each is independently 
variable over against the other. 56 (2) "No predicate of the 
one, unless it be that of duration, can be attributed to the other." 54 
And we are inclined to find implicit in his exposition a third 
criterion that appears to have been operative to a certain extent 
in bringing Stumpf to his distinction between these two types of 
ultimates : the mode in which they are apprehended. They are 
apprehended by "different directions of consciousness". The 
phenomena (Erscheinungen) "stand over against us as somewhat 
objective, that possesses its own laws, a somewhat that we have 
merely to describe and acknowledge". The Funktionen, however, 
we are told, are given us by "another direction of conscious- 
ness". 57 While Stumpf does not enlarge upon this third criterion, 
viz., mode of behavior under introspection, we still find it implicit 
in his statement that the Funktionen are apprehended by a 
"direction of consciousness" other than that by which the phe- 
nomena are apprehended. 



IV 

Stumpf believes that he can postulate on introspective grounds 
the possibility of independent variability of either the Erschein- 



8 CARL RAHN 

ungen or the Funktionen, without a variation in the one being 
necessarily accompanied be a concomitant change in the other. It 
will not be unprofitable, we believe, to follow him a little way 
while he is trying to make his point, for it will help us somewhat 
in understanding how he comes to believe that he is justified in 
regarding the Funktionen as being immediately given, and also 
to understand just what phases of consciousness he would sub- 
sume under that concept. Let us consider first his instances in 
which he believes a change in Funktion to occur while the Er- 
scheinungen, the sensory content, remains unchanged. He first 
takes up a case in which the Funktion of awareness is involved. 
Awareness is apparently taken by Stumpf in the sense of "simple 
apprehension" the most primitive of psychic Funktionen, the 
process "by which parts or relations are precipitated out of the 
undifferentiated chaos of phenomena". 57 * It is the Funktion 
that precedes the judgment, whether implicit or explicit. "To be 
sure," he continues, "there usually goes with it an instinctive 
positing of the part noted, and later it is often accompanied also 
by a conceptual judgment concerning the existence of the part or 
relation." The process of being aware (Wahrnchmcn, Bemerken, 
N otiznehmen) , is for Stumpf to be differentiated carefully from 
the Funktion of judgment and the "instinctive positing" just 
mentioned. Awareness of phenomena of the first class, of sensory 
content, he calls sensing (Empfinden), awareness of phenomena 
of the second class, of images, he calls imagining (Vorstellcn).* 7 
"Our thesis," says Stumpf, "applied to the case of sensory 
awareness, asserts that in the transition from being unnoticed 
to being noticed there need not necessarily be a change in the 
phenomena, in the sensory content, itself. That which changes is 
essentially of the nature of Funktion, of process. The transition, 
putting it figuratively, consists in an amassing of consciousness 
with reference to some part of the phenomenal content. Thus 
when one tone of a chord is singled out, there need not be a change 
in the chord as phenomenal content. What I apprehend at first as 
an unanalysed clang, then as an analysed one, remains what it 
was; so too the unified impression of some article of food, in 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY g 

which later I note somewhat of sweetness, somewhat of sourness, 
perhaps also an odor and a temperature quality ; so too the dermal 
sensation which is later analysed into pressure, cold and pain 
sensations, — these remain what they were. And it is not merely 
the objective stimuli and the psysiological processes, but also, 
I believe, the subjective phenomena (Erscheinungen) that may 
remain the same, unchanged." 59 "To be sure," he continues, "in 
most cases in which we say that a sensory impression appears 
clearer, more distinct, and more 'transparent' with reference to 
the total ordering of its contents, than a moment ago, there can 
be shown numerous changes in associated imagery. . . ." There 
is a quickening of the apperceptive process. A second view of a 
picture allows it to be taken in with fewer and shorter stopping 
points. The muscular sensations are reduced at least with refer- 
ence to the duration attribute. But not all cases, he believes, 
can be thus explained. Among them those just cited above. 
Likewise the following: Coming from the theatre, rapt in 
thought, we are aware in a vague way of the row of brilliant 
street lamps, or of the strokes of the bell tolling the hour. We 
now turn our attention directly to the lights, or to the further 
strokes. "We will have to say to ourselves," continues Stumpf, 
"that just a moment ago there also were lights and auditory 
impressions of the same kind and in the same spatial or temporal 
relations, incidentally also of the same intensity as those of which 
we are now aware." What has changed in all these cases is not 
the sensory content, according to Stumpf, but the Funktion. 
Since we saw that the peculiar attribute of the Funktion or process 
of awareness is the degree of clearness, we must infer that it is 
that which has changed in all these cases. We recall that by way 
of definition of this change, Stumpf had said that "the transition, 
putting it figuratively, consists in an amassing of consciousness 
with reference to some part of the phenomenal content". It 
would appear that the factor in conscious experience which is the 
basis for Stumpf 's judgment as to the immediate givenness of the 
Funktion in the case of awareness is just this amassing of atten- 
tion and holding it there. This much for clinching in a concrete 



io CARL RAHN 

case the content of his idea of one of the Funktionen. We shall 
revert to this anon, but for the present let us consider in what 
sense the phenomenal elements constituting the presentation may 
be said to be the same or similar in the mental state before atten- 
tion is directed to the lights and in the state in which it is thus 
directed. 



V 

In support of his position Stumpf refers to a paper by A. Marty 
which contains a criticism of James. 58 The passage in James tQ 
which Marty refers has the following citation from Stumpf: 
"And when, after successfully analysing this total, we call it back 
to memory, as it was in its unanalysed state, and compare it with 
the elements we have found, the latter (as it seems to me) may 
be recognized as real parts contained in the former, and the 
former seen to be their sum. So, for example, when we clearly 
perceive that the content of our sensation of oil of peppermint is 
partly a sensation of taste and partly of temperature." 29 Com- 
menting on this, James says: "I should prefer to say that we 
perceive that objective fact, known to us as the peppermint 
taste, to contain those other objective facts known as aromatic 
or sapid quality, and coldness, respectively. No ground to sup- 
pose that the vehicle of this last very complex perception has any 
identity with the earlier psychosis — least of all contained in it." 
Closer consideration of these two statements will bring us face 
to face with the parting of the ways between so-called structural- 
ism and functionalism, and will also make clear to us how diver- 
gent are the two attempts to do justice to a completer 
understanding of the activity side of consciousness that are 
represented by such psychologists as Dewey and Angell on the 
one hand, and by Stumpf on the other. It is hoped that this 
consideration, together with its bearing upon a discussion of the 
experimental investigations of the thought processes, which is to 



TION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY u 

a sufficient justification for broaching in this 
subject of the psychologist's fallacy and of the 
en. 



VI 

iccording to Stumpf the immediately given is the 
I Funktionen and the relations immanent in these, 
ndividual is momentarily conscious", i.e., the 
ediate. We have no reason to believe that a 
the temper of James could not agree to this 
ist in so far as the given is defined as that of 
dual is momentarily conscious, or the psychically 
difference therefore must lie in the use to which 
ained in the form of the subject's judgments 
mtent of his immediate experience are put and 
ion that is placed upon them. James' contention 
rmint experience is a totality and has nothing in 
e experience in which consciousness analyses oil 
nto a complex of stimuli mediating taste and 
ations. That analysis has been made under con- 
h attention is focussed on the content as 
ad yields results in a rather elaborate judgment 
ter of the "object" presented. (We can here 
uestion of James' use of the term, "object" and 
he two experiences are quite dissimilar and the 
;aid to be contained in the former. James here 
ilytic experience as a whole — in the terms of 
ily to the Erscheinungen which constitute the 
>o to the Funktionen which may be directly 
rig the immediate experience of peppermint- 
dements. 

ise by itself we may say that in the unanalysed 
strikes as immediate matter-of-fact (was als 
Ibar einleuchtet) is to be couched in terms of 



io CARL RAHN 

case the content of his idea of one of the Funktionei 
revert to this anon, but for the present let us consi 
sense the phenomenal elements constituting the prese 
be said to be the same or similar in the mental state 1 
tion is directed to the lights and in the state in whi 
directed. 



In support of his position Stumpf refers to a paper 
which contains a criticism of James. 58 The passage 
which Marty refers has the following citation fr 
"And when, after successfully analysing this total, \\ 
to memory, as it was in its unanalysed state, and cor 
the elements we have found, the latter (as it seems 
be recognized as real parts contained in the forr 
former seen to be their sum. So, for example, wh< 
perceive that the content of our sensation of oil of ] 
partly a sensation of taste and partly of temperatu 
menting on this, James says: "I should prefer to 
perceive that objective fact, known to us as th< 
taste, to contain those other objective facts knowr 
or sapid quality, and coldness, respectively. No gi 
pose that the vehicle of this last very complex perce 
identity with the earlier psychosis — least of all con 
Closer consideration of these two statements will 1 
to face with the parting of the ways between so-call 
ism and functionalism, and will also make clear to 1 
gent are the two attempts to do justice to 
understanding of the activity side of consciousr 
represented by such psychologists as Dewey and i 
one hand, and by Stumpf on the other. It is he 
consideration, together with its bearing upon a disc 
experimental investigations of the thought processe 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY n 

follow, will be a sufficient justification for broaching in this 
connection the subject of the psychologist's fallacy and of the 
immediately given. 



VI 

We saw that according to Stumpf the immediately given is the 
"phenomena and Funktionen and the relations immanent in these, 
of which an individual is momentarily conscious", i.e., the 
psychically immediate. We have no reason to believe that a 
psychologist of the temper of James could not agree to this 
definition, at least in so far as the given is defined as that of 
which the individual is momentarily conscious, or the psychically 
immediate. The difference therefore must lie in the use to which 
the data thus gained in the form of the subject's judgments 
regarding the content of his immediate experience are put and 
in the interpretation that is placed upon them. James' contention 
is that the peppermint experience is a totality and has nothing in 
common with the experience in which consciousness analyses oil 
of peppermint into a complex of stimuli mediating taste and 
temperature sensations. That analysis has been made under con- 
ditions in which attention is focussed on the content as 
Erscheinungen and yields results in a rather elaborate judgment 
as to the character of the "object" presented. (We can here 
leave aside the question of James' use of the term, "object" and 
"objective".) The two experiences are quite dissimilar and the 
latter cannot be said to be contained in the former. James here 
refers to the analytic experience as a whole — in the terms of 
Stumpf not merely to the Erscheinungen which constitute the 
"object", but also to the Funktionen which may be directly 
involved in giving the immediate experience of peppermint- 
analysed-into-its-elements. 

Taking each case by itself we may say that in the unanalysed 
state that which strikes as immediate matter-of-fact (was als 
Tatsache unmittelbar einleuchtet) is to be couched in terms of 



12 CARL RAHN 

the judgment, that within the larger setting which it had with 
reference to some activity, the part that was singled out and 
noted was a unitary somewhat ; the peppermint, with a pleasurable 
or painful feeling tone, mayhap also some somatic and visceral 
sensations. This much is the immediately given — a description 
of the immediate psychical content. It is that which the subject 
reports. So much for the first phase of the experience, in which 
the object is "given" as a whole, unanalysed. Then follows the 
analytic phase, or the one in which the object is apprehended at 
the focus of attention. The individual now reports that he can 
discriminate two sorts of sensations: taste and temperature. 
This statement, plus anything he may have to say concerning his 
awareness of concomitant process, whether sensations connected 
with the accommodation of the sense organ, or Funktionen if he 
employs that category, or other phenomena at the fringe, — these 
will constitute the psychological data of the immediately given of 
the second experience. We do not pretend that this is an exhaus- 
tive statement of all that a careful observer might report as the 
immediately given in the two experiences. But it is by means of 
such judgments only that the psychologist can in any sense be 
said to get at the content that is immediately given in any con- 
sciousness other than his own. It is only in this way that the 
immediately given in the character of "mind-stuff" can be made 
the starting point for a body of psychological knowledge dealing 
with human consciousness. 68 We now ask: What may the 
investigator do with the data thus gained? Stumpf claims that 
he is entitled to read back into the first experience the "content" 
of the second experience. There is nothing, to be sure, that 
would militate against his right to do this if he so desires. And 
if by doing so he obtains a system of knowledge that serves his 
purposes and that may serve the purposes of others, he is thereby 
justified by his procedure, so long as in doing so he is not intro- 
ducing an element of immanent inconsistency into his system. 

Yet we believe that this latter thing does happen. In what 
sense can that part of conscious content abstracted from the 
second experience be said to be "recognized as real parts con- 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 13 

tained in the former"? The abstracted "elements" are immedi- 
ately given as part of another, the second experience, and that 
section of the content of the second experience therefore cannot 
be said to be identical with the content of the first experience or 
any part thereof. If not that, have we any immediate evidence 
that they are identically similar? If we take immediate evidence 
to mean the record of immediate judgments in the sense defined 
above, then this question, too, must receive a negative reply. 
Even Stumpf can do no more than tell us that "we will have to 
say to ourselves that just a moment ago", while we were lost in 
thought in coming down the lighted thoroughfare, "there also 
were lights and auditory impressions of the same kind, and in 
the same spatial or temporal relations, incidentally also of the 
same intensity as those of which we are now aware". This 
statement, however, is not of the nature of an immediate judg- 
ment passed upon the immediately given content of the first 
experience, for such could only have been obtained by stopping 
our man lost in reverie and requiring him then and there to tell 
us concerning the character of sensory content as it was margin- 
ally present in consciousness. Stumpf himself tries to subsume 
his judgment just quoted under the head of direct comparison, 
for he is apparently aware that a doctrine so important for his 
theory as this is, ought to rest on some kind of evidence. We do 
not here cavil at his argument that the term "direct comparison" 
ought not to be restricted to those cases in which the two contents 
to be compared are simultaneously present to consciousness during 
the act of comparison, but that it should be made to include also 
those cases of comparison of a present content with another that 
is just passing, or of one just passing with one that preceded it 
but is still lingering in consciousness. 61 We would, however, 
suggest that the conditions under which this method of direct 
comparison is to be employed, be more rigidly defined, in order 
that we may have a criterion for the validity of the evidence 
which is yielded by this method. The evidence derived from the 
illustration cited in Professor Stumpf 's treatise does not appear to 
be altogether unambiguous. Reverting to the case of the lights 



14 CARL RAHN 

and the strokes of the bell tolling the hour while we are coming 
from the theatre, lost in thought, we are told that we can escape 
the interpretation that the two contents are alike only by making 
special artificial assumptions, e.g. : that in the reproduction of the 
content just past for purposes of comparison with the present 
content, there is in the process of reproduction a change or an 
assimilation to the standard of the present content. 60 Why such 
an objection should appear particularly far-fetched and "artificial' ' 
is not immediately patent to us. That such an assimilation of 
past experience to the standard of present experience frequently 
does occur, no one will doubt. We know that the lights of our 
city streets possess fairly uniform candle power, that the tolling 
of the bell in the steeple, too, is fairly constant in timbre and rate 
of stroke, — what then would be more natural at first blush than 
to infer that the experience of just a moment ago must have been 
practically (there is much virtue in this expression of our every- 
day life) the same as it is now that we are attending to the 
objects directly. (At this point Titchener might well warn us 
against what he has called the "stimulus error.") And even when 
the judgment is not based on mediate experience as just described, 
but an attempt is made to base it directly on a comparison of the 
two contents by the method discussed above, it would be pre- 
ferable to have the two experiences called out under somewhat 
different conditions than is the case in the illustration, i.e., we 
would ask for experimental conditions that would minimize the 
suggestive influence of the content given in the state of focalized 
attention. 

A thorough-going experimental psychology would demand that 
every aspect of the sensory experience be compared in the two 
cases. What is the difference of the content mediated by the same 
objective stimulus under conditions of focal and of marginal 
apprehension? How do the sensations compare with reference to 
their various attributes? Do they differ at all in quality, or in 
duration, or in extensity, or in intensity? And then the further 
question arises whether these are the only respects in which the 
sensations may differ. Only after all of these are answered are 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 15 

we entitled to conclude that on the basis of immediate intro- 
spective evidence the two contents must be regarded as being 
identically similar. Lacking experimental evidence on some of 
these points, we turn to everyday introspection and to the difficul- 
ties which this question has caused in some of the theoretical 
discussions, for a formulation of the problem. Here we note that 
certain doctrines have become so thoroughly incorporated into 
the psychological point of view, that they inhibit effectually the 
rise of some of the questions indicated above. The doctrine of 
specific energy apparently precludes debate as to the question of 
the sameness of quality, so long as the objective stimuli and the 
nerves stimulated remain the same. Duration, too, so far as 
the immediate sensation is concerned, as over against its 
influence upon future psychic experience, would be regarded as 
the function of the same factor in both cas?°, i.e., of the applica- 
tion of the stimulus subject to the conditions of psychological 
fatigue. We would question, however, whether the immediately 
given duration for consciousness would necessarily be the same. 
Without raising the issue of a possible difference in behavior of 
intrinsically pleasurable and intrinsically painful sensory processes 
as regards subjective duration under the two conditions, of being 
attended to on the one hand, and not being attended to on the 
other,. — we would ask whether the attention reaction does not 
often contain within itself the conditions for prolonging the 
objectively measured time of what subjectively is experienced as 
a uniformly continuous sensory process? This problem is per- 
haps most fascinating in the field of cutaneous and auditory 
sensation. In the case of the bell tolling the hour, there is a 
possibility for the last chime to linger on in consciousness in a 
way it does not do under conditions of inattention. Under such 
circumstances the ear wooes the sound, reaches after it, as it 
were, as it retreats and gradually envelopes itself in nothingness. 
When we turn to the attribute of extensity, orthodoxy again 
inhibits any tendency to dissent from the statement that the two 
states exhibit no difference of sensory content in this respect. 
The moment, however, that we come to the question of intensity, 



16 CARL RAHN 

we note a more pronounced lack of unanimity. At this point we 
can find some experimental material that is more or less germane. 
If we take the term broadly enough, most of these experimental 
attempts may be subsumed under the head of distraction tests. 
Most of this work is mentioned by Titchener in his "Lectures on 
the Elementary Psychology of Feeling and Attention", and its 
trend is in general to show that within a certain range at least 
attention does tend to increase the intensity of the sensory con- 
tent. 91 Stumpf himself admits this much in a later monograph, 
Zur Einteilung der Wissenschaften, where he says: "It does 
happen, of course, that at times the Funktionen retroactively 
bring about a change in the Erscheinungen, as when in the case 
of concentrated attention the intensity of a very weak sensory or 
image content is raised to a certain degree." 69 This would in a 
certain sense be equivalent to admitting the validity of our 
objection, if it were not for his immediate qualification following 
the statement just quoted : "But in general such retroaction does 
not occur, and when it does occur, it is always within the limits of 
the possibilities prescribed by the nature of the Erscheinungen/' 
We find, then, that there is some question whether we are justi- 
fied in asserting unqualifiedly that the sensory "content" of the 
two types of experience mentioned by James and Stumpf, is 
identically similar as regards the usually recognized "attributes." 



VII 

Having touched upon the question with reference to the 
usually recognized attributes of sensation, we may go on to ask 
whether these are the only directions in which the sensory 
content might possibly differ in the two states. Here we come 
upon one of the most vexing of the moot questions of psychology, 
the question of clearness or vividness as an attribute of sensation. 
All writers appear to agree that if there is an independently dis- 
tinguishable aspect of conscious experience that is to be designated 
by that name, it is to be noted in connection with that phase of 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 17 

consciousness which is known as attention. Stumpf, we saw, 
makes clearness an attribute, not of the sensory content, but of 
the Funk Hon of awareness. The amount of consciousness that is 
involved in my being aware of the bonfire outside, may vary 
from almost none, when I am only marginally aware of it, to 
almost all, as when I sit fascinated, as it were, by the leaping 
tongues of flame and the mystic clouds of smoke. The difference 
in the two cases, we have already seen, at too great length, 
perhaps, lies for Stumpf not in the sensory content, but in the 
mental activity that is operating upon that content, an activity 
of which we may be distinctly aware and the attribute of which 
is just this degree of clearness. When we turn, however, to the 
pages of a psychologist such as Titchener, we read the following : 
"Whatever attention is, it must be described in terms of mental 
processes, sensations and images and affections, and ex- 
plained by reference to its physiological conditions." 77 Titchener, 
therefore, proceeds to make clearness an attribute not of a mental 
activity, but of one of the elements, viz., sensation. "Clearness 
is the attribute which gives a sensation its particular place in 
consciousness: the clearer sensation is dominant, independent, 
outstanding, the less clear sensation is subordinate, undistin- 
guished in the background of consciousness." 76 A sensation is 
clear when it "is at its best, when it is making the most of itself 
in experience. Clearness is an intensive attribute, in the sense 
that it shows degrees of more or less : but it is altogether different 
from intensity proper." 78 It is important for us to note only that 
for Titchener clearness is regarded as an attribute of sensation 
and that it is "altogether different from intensity proper". In 
trying to make clear this distinction he introduces a quotation 
from Wundt. He writes : "In the first place, there can be no doubt 
of the independent status of clearness as sensation attribute. As 
Wundt says : 'Klarheit und Starke der Eindriicke sind durchaus 
von einander verschieden' ; *das Klarer- und das Starker-werden 
eines Eindruckes sind . . . subjectiv wohl zu unterscheidende 
Vorgange'." 90 The citation from Wundt is correct; not so, 
however, the interpretation that Titchener puts upon it. For 



18 CARL RAHN 

when we read the context in Wundt, we come upon the following : 
"Da die Starke der Empfindungselemente einer Vorstellung auf 
die Klarheit einen zweifellosen Einfluss ausiibt, so sind nicht 
selten beide Begriffe mit einander vermengt oder sogar fur ident- 
isch gehalten worden. Streng genommen kann aber immer nur 
von der Starke der Empfindungselemente, nicht von der Starke 
einer Vorstellung die Rede sein, da in diese meist Empfindungs- 
inhalte von sehr verschiedener Starke eingehen. Umgekehrt 
dagegen sind Klarheit unde Deutlichkeit ausschliesslch Eigen- 
schaften der Vorstellungen, die auf Empfindungen nur iibertragen 
werden konnen, wenn diese als Vorstellungsbestandteile gedacht 
werden." 109 In other words, Wundt does not make clearness 
peculiarly an attribute of the sensation or image element, but an 
attribute of the complex percept or Vorstellung. Wundt is quite 
explicit on this point, and in the very context from which 
Titchener takes the quotation, Wundt repudiates the interpreta- 
tion that is put upon it. But the essential thing for us is that 
Wundt does note the fact of clearness and that he makes it an 
attribute of content. 

Here we have examples of three different points of view re- 
garding the fact of clearness as a factor of conscious experience. 
All three agree that introspection reveals the fact of degrees of 
clearness as an attribute of some phase of consciousness, and that 
the higher and highest degrees of clearness accrue to states of 
consciousness under conditions that are technically called "focal- 
ized attention". But they differ as to the phases of conscious 
experience of which clearness is to be regarded the attribute. 
Titchener makes clearness one of the attributes in terms of which 
sensation and image elements are to be described. Stump f makes 
it the attribute of one of his psychic Fnnktioncn. the attribute by 
which the Funktion of awareness is presumably revealed to us as 
"immediately given". Then we come to Wundt. Like Stumpf, 
he too believes that we may become directly aware of psychic 
activities : "Alongside of the going and coming of percepts and 
ideas ( Vorstellungen) we are now and then more or less distinctly 
aware of an inner activity that we call attention." 108 Yet unlike 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 19 

Stumpf, Wundt would still reduce this consciousness of psychic 
activity to elements of sensation and affection. But clearness is 
not an attribute of this complex of elements that taken together 
go to constitute our consciousness of activity; nor is clearness 
for him an attribute of the sensation and image element as it is 
for Titchener; it is rather one of those "new attributes, peculiar 
to the compounds themselves", that "always arise as a result of 
the combination of these elements". 106 "Since clearness, obscur- 
ity, etc., . . . always arise from the interconnection of psychical 
compounds, they cannot be regarded as the determinants of 
psychical elements." We have therefore before us a case of 
agreement as to the "immediate givenness" of the aspect of 
clearness in conscious experience, but disagreement as to the 
particular phase of conscious experience of which it is to be 
regarded the attribute or determinant. 



VIII 

Is there any way in which we can gain vantage ground whence 
we may see how these differences arise in the three psychological 
systems ? One way, it would seem, may prove fruitful. That is, 
attempting to attain to an appreciation of the immanent rela- 
tionship of the psychological categories within the various 
systems. That will obviate an exposition anew of the ramifica- 
tions of the problem of mental analysis as a scientific method. 
We will examine instead the precipitants of what various 
writers regard as legitimate application of this method. Let us 
consider first various implications involved in Titchener's exposi- 
tion. For him the "given" is the concrete experience, e.g., the 
square and the melody. "Our psychological task is to analyse 
these given perceptions, to discover their elements, and to formu- 
late the laws under which elementary processes combine. That 
done, we can write for 'square' and 'melody', 'these and these 
elements connected in these and these uniform ways', and we can 
go on to search for physiological conditions. We have solved our 



20 CARL RAHN 

problem in analytical terms; we have not first defined the terms, 
and then put them together to produce something that was not 
contained in the definition. ,,8ia Titchener is also fully aware 
of the relation of his sensation elements to the percept: "The 
elements are . . . the result of analysis; the perceptions are the 
original things, and the sensations are found in them by observa- 
tion; perceptions are given us, and we discover that they are 
analysable. Misunderstanding here is fatal to the student of 
psychology, for it means misapprehension of the central psycho- 
logical problem." 79 The mental elements, processes "that can- 
not be further analysed by introspection", of which sensations 
constitute a class, "are simple ... in the sense that they are 
mental experience reduced to its lowest terms; but they are still 
real processes, still actual items of mental experience. Hence, 
like the chemical elements, they show various aspects or attributes, 
— present different sides, so to speak, — each of which may be 
examined separately by the psychologist. It is by reference to 
these attributes that introspection is able to classify them under 
different headings". 75 The mental element must be defined by 
"an enumeration of its attributes". 97 Titchener is furthermore at 
pains to have us know that the elements of sensation, feeling, 
and image, are not to be conceived of as static things, but as pro- 
cesses. 71 They melt and fuse and flow into one another as they 
occur in the stream that we call our consciousness. Yet with all 
this insistence on the process character of consciousness, Titchener 
nevertheless reverts ever and anon to the use of analogies taken 
from physical science which are not always the happiest, if his 
intention is to emphasize unambiguously this process-character.* 
Whatever content the chemist may put into his concept of chem- 
ical element, one thing there is that is not a part of its meaning, 
it does not signfy a process. The concept of "process" implies a 
correlative one of a structural system of parts or elements which 
act and react upon one another. It is this interaction within a 



* Cf. Titchener, A Textbook of Psychology, 46: "They (the elementary 
mental processes) must remain unchanged, however persistent oar attempt 
at analysis." See also above § 11. 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 21 

structural system that constitutes a process. In the mind of the 
chemist the elements are abstractions, to be sure, but the essential 
Merkmal of this abstract concept is that of a relatively fixed form 
of matter that behaves thus when it is brought into interaction 
with certain other elements, and thus and so when it comes into 
interplay with still other forms or combinations, under these and 
these conditions. And it is this interaction between the various 
elementary forms of matter that constitutes a chemical process. 
But for the chemist the abstract element which he chases through 
these various processes remains a relatively fixed substrate, a 
"form of matter". Now it may come to pass, however, that a 
physicist comes along and takes one of the simple substances of 
the chemist into his own laboratory, and now, for the purposes 
of the physicist, it may become within itself, without reference 
to other substances even, a highly complex affair. It may become 
a closed system of forces or of atoms or what not, which act and 
react upon one another in certain definite ways. In other words, 
there are processes going on within, and the physicist by his 
analysis has gone beyond the analysis of the chemist. What is 
more, this anaylsis is not altogether merely a matter of theory, 
but is paralleled by some empirical evidence. For the chemist, 
however, such an analysis is irrelevant; for him the element re- 
mains an ultimate somewhat, which by interaction with others, 
gives rise to various chemical activities or processes, in the course 
of which the element may discover various attributes or proper- 
ties that are brought out by varying the conditions under which 
it is brought into interaction with the other elements. It is 
considerations such as these that lead us to believe that the analogy 
of the chemical element is an unfortunate one if our meaning is 
that the simplest analysable content of consciousness is essentially 
a changing, fluid somewhat. Change and flux are the result of 
interaction of the elements, under varying conditions of heat, of 
pressure, etc., but these processes are not themselves the elements. 
To refer to a phenomenon now as an element and now as a 
process implies a shifting in purpose and in point of view, as in 
the case of the chemist and the physicist cited above. If the 



22 CARL RAHN 

element is to be considered as a part, an irreducible, ultimate 
content of consciousness, then it cannot at the same time be 
regarded as a process, for a process implies the interrelation of a 
number of elements or factors. The concept of element is, or 
formerly was, a structural category, whereas that of process is a 
functional one. 



IX 

But to leave the question of nomenclature — for we are here 
interested chiefly in the manner in which the attributive aspects 
of experience have been singled out and in the method by which 
they are "attributed" to the various categories, i.e., how do the 
"attributes" come to constitute the element? — We next note that 
affections, ideas and sensations are the "results of analysis". 81 
They are the simplest, rock-bottom forms of "real", "actual" 
experience that analysis will divulge. As real components of 
consciousness they reveal to us certain aspects or attributes, just 
as do the chemical elements. 75 It is in terms of these attributes 
that a sensation is to be defined, says Titchener, and the sensa- 
tion is not something over and above the sum of these attributes. 
His position is further similar to that of Kiilpe, who says at the 
time of writing his text : "These attributes are characterized 
(i) by their inseparability from the sensation ... (2) Further, 
the nullification of any of the attributes involves the disappearance 
or cessation of the sensation." 32 We may now ask : What is the 
method by which these attributes of the element are determined ? 
Titchener tells us that the element is not further analysable 
by introspection. On the other hand we are told that the element 
presents different aspects or sides, called attributes, that can be 
separately attended to. Thus attended to they are discriminated, 
and what is this other than further analysis ? Is it other in kind 
than that which yielded the elements? And are the precipitants 
of this further analysis of another sort? 

This question has been touched upon, among others, by Tal- 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 23 

bot, 70 Washburn 98 and Calkins. 23 Talbot, writing on "The 
Doctrine of Conscious Elements", points out that "the modern 
theory lays particular stress upon the fact that the psycho- 
logical element is an elementary process", and that the "criter- 
ion of a psychological element is irreducibility". And yet, coming 
to discuss the attributes Talbot says that "it is a fact that the 
work of analysis does not actually cease when they (the irreducible 
ultimates) are discovered . . . there is need for a second process 
for the purpose of determining the properties of our elements 
... In the first analysis we passed successively from one process 
to another, finding in each new stage the explanation of the more 
complex one which preceded it. When we have at length reached 
a process which we cannot explain by means of another process, 
our regress is finished, our element is discovered. Whatever 
analysis may now be possible, will be entirely distinct from the 
first, and will in no way affect its claim to be complete. The 
attempt to find an explanation for our process in something else 
than process, the effort to go behind our ultimate in order to 
explain it, would but repeat the fundamental error of the doctrine 
of the faculties." Yet the writer has failed to show why the 
precipitant of the last analysis, the "attribute", is not entitled 
to be called a process just as much as are the percept and the 
sensation, which, we take it, constitute the earlier precipitants in 
the "regress". It is simply asserted that the second analysis is 
entirely distinct from the first one, i.e., from the analysis by which 
the sensation is abstracted from the percept, and presumably also 
from that by which the percept has been abstracted from the total 
experience of the moment. (This would seem to be implied by 
the use of the term "regress".) An immanent criticism of the 
position just noted is impossible, however, for nowhere in the 
paper is there a direct definition of the conceptions of "analysis" 
and "process". We take the word "distinct" in the sense of 
separate process of analysis, rather than in the sense of a different 
kind of analytic process, for the writer says, "In the first analysis 
we passed successively from one process to another, finding in 
each stage the explanation of the more complex one that pre- 



24 CARL RAHN 

ceded it." From this it appears that the writer would not hold 
that the three analytic processes that we mentioned represented 
different methods of analysis. The distinction, therefore, must 
lie in the precipitants, that is. in the percept, the sensation, and 
the attribute. The percept is a complex process. The sensation 
is a simple process. It is an "ultimate". The attributes are not 
processes, they are merely "attributes of our elements". In call- 
ing the element a process, Talbot believes that its "functional 
nature" is being emphasized. From this it would appear that 
"functioning" is conceived of as being the essential Merkmal of 
"process" as a psychological category. Now it may well be that 
what analysis brings to light when it discovers what Talbot and 
Titchener designate as an attribute, may be the functionally deter- 
mining factor in many of our conscious reactions : e.g., intensity 
of a tone rather than any other of its "attributes". Intensity 
functions frequently, just as does quality, or a complex stimulus 
pattern, in evoking its own peculiar specific reactions, and if this 
be admitted to be tantamount to ascribing to it a "functional 
nature", then the intensity, as an "attribute", has the same claim 
as the sensation, as an "element", to be designated a "process". 
If, therefore, intensity be conceded to possess functional value in 
its own right in determining some of our conscious reactions, Tal- 
bot cannot on that score deny it the right to be called an ele- 
mentary process. Also, it appears to satisfy the criterion of 
irreducibility. The only question that could arise is this : Has it 
been abstracted from the complex mental state by a legitimate 
process of psychological abstraction? 

Calkins, in a paper on the "Attributes of Sensation", com- 
menting on the position of Talbot, says : "either the sensation has 
attributes, but then it is complex, no element and has lost its 
excuse for psychological being ; or the sensation is an irreducible 
and unanalysable element, but then its simplicity is absolute, not 
to be trifled with, and not to be explained away by reference to 
any second process of analysis into elements, which yet are not 
elements, but only 'attributes', 'aspects' or something equally 
vague and meaningless." Consequently Calkins avers that inten- 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 25 

sities and qualities "take their places among the distinguishable 
elements of consciousness", for "if abstract irreducibleness and 
distinctness be seriously maintained as the sole criteria of the 
psychic element, analytic psychology has no place and no use for 
the 'attribute' of sensation". In other words, Calkins affirms that 
on the criterion of unanalysability it is the "attribute" that should 
be regarded as the element in consciousness. We have, therefore, 
two different conclusions as to the psychic ultimates based on the 
criterion of irreducibility. 

Washburn, in a paper on psychological analysis, points out that 
such differences are very likely to arise so long as our conception 
of analysis is not carefully defined. Of purely "psychological" 
methods she distinguishes two: "(1) the psychological method of 
calling mental phenomena elementary because they are the sim- 
plest phenomena that, being independently variable, may be at- 
tended to separately; (2) the psychological method of calling 
them elementary because they are the simplest phenomena, that, 
as capable of being experienced apart from each other, may be 
attended to separately." Calkins' element is a result of the first 
method; Titchener's is a result of the second. 



Such being the method by which the sensation is obtained as a 
psychical element, we find that Kiilpe's statement, quoted above 
concerning the nature of the attributes and their interrelations, is 
quite in accord with Washburn's analysis. And we find that 
Titchener's statement accords with that of Kulpe. For Titchener, 
then, the sensation element is the sum of all its attributes, and 
not a something over and above these. "The annihilation of any 
attribute carries with it the annihilation, the disappearance, of the 
sensation itself." 82 It is the being given together, therefore, of 
the attributes that constitutes a sensation a "real process", an 
"actual item of experience". "If a sensation is to exist, it must 
come into being with all its attributes." 83 Since an attribute 



26 CARL RAHN 

cannot exist in consciousness without the others, it cannot lay 
claim to being an independent element of experience ; since when 
one is present, the others, too, will be discovered, and since they 
somehow constitute a unitary item of experience, the complex 
is designated as the element. Yet the question may arise whether 
their unification or incorporation into a single item of experience 
is a function of their peculiar psychic character, or whether it is 
not rather a function of the habit of objective reference. If the 
former is to be the case, then in every fusion of sensations of 
different departments of sense, introspection would always unam- 
biguously connect up the intensity component of the experience 
with its proper quality ; yet it is still a moot question whether this 
is always the case. If, on the other hand, the uniqueness and 
irreducibility of the sensation element is a function of the habit 
of objective reference to a stimulus acting upon a particular 
sense-organ, then too it cannot be regarded otherwise than as a 
derived, rather than an inherent, characteristic of the element. 
For the present, therefore, we can mean by the term "insepara- 
bility of the attributes" nothing more than a condition for their 
entrance into, and exit from, consciousness ; but nothing for cer- 
tain concerning their behavior while they are in consciousness. 
It still remains a task for experimental psychology to determine 
whether or not the incorporation of the "attributes" into a unique 
item of experience, a particular sensation, is an 'irreducible' fact 
of consciousness. 

It may not be amiss to discuss at this point the relative impor- 
tance of the various attributes, which would lead up to a consider- 
ation of the relation of the attributes inter se. If we turn to some 
of the textbooks of psychology we very often run across a state- 
ment to the effect that of all the various attributes that the differ- 
ent writers ascribe to the sensation element, quality is somehow 
the most important of the lot. It is the "body" of the sensa- 
tion, so to speak, and so soon as we have passed the introductory 
pages of preliminary definition, we find many of the writers 
falling into the way of speaking as if the quality were the sensa- 
tion. Thus Kulpe : "Im algemeinen lassen sich alle diese Eigen- 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 27 

schaften variieren, und es beruht darauf die Moglichkeit ihre 
Gesetze im Einzelnen festzustellen. Nur spielt auch in dieser 
Beziehung die Qualitat eine eigenthumlich Rolle. Eine Aender- 
ung der Qualitat ist mit einem Uebergang zu anderen 
Empfindungen identisch, wahrend eine blosse Aenderung der 
iibrigen Eigenschaften bei gleichbleibender Qualitat scheinbar 
dieselbe Empfindung fortbestehen lasst. Auch hierin zeigt sich 
dass die Qualitat mit dem Wesen der Empfindung auf das 
Engste verwachsen ist. Sie representirt gewissermassen gegen- 
iiber den anderen wechselnden Eigenschaften den festen Kern 
der Empfindung." 33 It looms large in its importance for experi- 
ence, and is singled out and attended to while the other attributes, 
like mute Cinderellas, perform their humbler functions unobtru- 
sively in the background. Yet here again, it is a question whether 
this advantage possessed by the attribute of quality must be 
accepted as an ultimate fact testifying to a unique position of 
quality as over against the other attributes, specifically as over 
against intensity. It may well be that the usual function of 
sensory consciousness in human experience is the discrimination 
of qualitative differences. For cognitive reactions, for building 
up knowledge, apprehension of quality may be basic, and atten- 
tion focuses upon it. Yet there may be other reactions in which 
it is not the quality but the attribute of intensity that takes first 
place on the stage. This may be the case in emotional reactions 
of the more primitive sort, where the intensity of stimulation 
becomes the functionally important factor, not the quality. For 
aesthetic reactions degree of intensity often becomes as impor- 
tant and often more important than sensory quality. There 
are individuals for whom a bit of music is carried almost entirely 
in terms of intensity changes plus rhythm. Primitive music, 
characterized as it is by a poverty of tonal variation and making 
up for this monotony by accent and rhythm, may present favora- 
ble material for a study of this question. Of two tones struck 
in rapid succession, the one softly, the other accented, the hearer 
is immediately aware very often of differences in intensities, but 
is in a quandary as to the relative position of the two experiences 



28 CARL RAHN 

in the tonal scale. It may well be that for his "immediate experi- 
ence" the elements that came to consciousness may have had the 
marks of being auditory rather than visual experiences, but they 
may have been quite innocent of any specific quality mark; if 
quale there was, it did not possess the same degree of clearness as 
did the intensity character. Apply an icy cold point never so 
lightly to the skin, and remove it quickly; the subject reports 
intensity of sensation, but often is in doubt as to the quale. We 
may therefore ask whether the tendency to regard the quality as 
the "body" of the sensory experience, as over against other at- 
tributes, especially as over against intensity, is not a function, in 
part at least, of the habit of attending to the quality of the sensory 
content, rather than to its other "aspects". If this should prove 
to be the case, quality would be robbed of its unique position 
among the attributes. 

Concerning the relation of the various attributes that are 
usually named as the inseparable constituents of a sensation 
element, we have thus far come to note the following considera- 
tions: We ought to observe some caution lest we put into the 
conception of "inseparability of the attributes" a meaning that is 
not yet warranted by experimental evidence. To affirm the 
inseparability of the attributes means only that they come into and 
go out of consciousness together. It does not necessarily mean 
that while they are in consciousness they are held together in a 
unity by some tie inherent in their peculiar psychological consti- 
tution, for it may well be that the readiness with which we 
attribute the "attributes" to one and the same "sensation", may 
be due to the operation of factors extrinsic to the particular 
"sensation". . . . We noted further that there is a tendency 
to regard quality as the more basic of the attributes, and the 
question presented itself whether this had to be accepted as an 
ultimate fact, or whether there are not conditions under which 
degree of intensity may come to assume the "body" role. If any 
introspective evidence should be brought to light that would show 
that this may at times be the case, then quality would be robbed 
of its seemingly unique position among the attributes. That 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 29 

intensity may become the functionally important factor cannot be 
doubted on introspective grounds; that in some of the lower 
forms it is functionally the important factor, as quality for the 
most part is with us, seems highly probable ; it therefore remains 
as yet an open question whether we ought unreservedly and 
without qualification ascribe to quale the unique position of being 
the fundamental attribute, the "body" of the sensory experience. 
. . . And we saw in the third place that while there appears to 
be a close connection between the various attributes so far as 
their entrance into, and exit from, consciousness is concerned, 
it was nevertheless possible in the case of intensity and quality 
that they might differ widely with respect to their attentional 
clearness. This is in a certain sense a restatement of the point 
just made, viz. : that the various attributes might differ from time 
to time in their functional value. Nevertheless the restatement in 
terms of attentional clearness might prove to possess some signifi- 
cance. 



XI 

It is this last point that is of paramount interest for us: the 
status of clearness as an attribute of sensation, such as Titchener 
makes it, as over against Stumpf , who makes it an attribute of 
another psychological category: the Funktion. If it be true that 
under certain conditions attention may focus upon some one of 
the attributes of a sensation to the neglect of the others, so that 
it thereby attains to a greater degree of attentional clearness than 
do the others, then we would have an anomalous case of one 
and the same sensation characterized by two "clearnesses", and 
these not attributable to the sensation as a whole, but to various 
ones of its attributes. How this situation can be escaped is hard 
to see, for we certainly do have conscious experiences in the 
course of the serious business of life, in which certain ones of 
the aspects of sensory experience must be abstracted from, and 
attention given only to one, say quality or intensity. Or would 



30 CARL RAHN 

one claim that the process of attention in this case functions quite 
differently than in the case where we are attentive to other 
objects of normal experience? In a case of sudden need of a 
tool, say for prying open, we cast about and grasp the first article 
that appears to answer our purposes. The conventional use of 
the implement may be quite other than the service into which we 
are now impressing it, but in the present situation attention 
abstracts from all uses but its adequacy in the immediate situa- 
tion. It is this aspect that is in the foreground of consciousness, 
and the meaning aspect of the implement in its normal function, 
if present at all, is certainly not so clear. Is the case essentially 
different when we come to the aspects of experience as sensory? 
We see that we are here in the midst -of the same difficulty that 
we met before in the discussion of analysis. Indeed, it is nothing 
less than the very heart of that problem. Introspection, we are 
told, is the process of attending to the flow of conscious processes 
as conscious processes, with a view to noting parts and relation- 
ships between parts. A part is noted in that it stands out more 
clearly from the rest of consciousness, i.e., the part possesses 
greater attentional clearness. This part is then further scrutinized 
and it in turn divulges some simpler form of content. Finally we 
arrive at an element, say a sensation. We saw that while the 
psychologist starts out by saying that the sensation is the sum 
of all its attributes, he practically makes one of them, quality, 
the essence of the sensation, so that the other "aspects" become 
attributes of this one. We saw that under ordinary conditions 
quality is the aspect of sensory experience that is functionally 
most significant, and that we have therefore come to give it 
first place among the various aspects of sensation. In other 
words, quality is attended to and hence whatever attentional 
clearness may accrue to sensory experience under ordinary 
conditions, is in reality a clearness of quality. Whatever other 
aspects the sensation may present, they are in the background of 
consciousness. Let us examine for a moment the real import of 
one of the "conditions'' of clearness. The most obvious of these 
conditions, says Titchener, is the intensity of the stimulus. 89 If 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 31 

we introspect any of these cases in which an intense stimulus 
commands our attention, we find that the most pronounced 
character of the sensory content as it is precipitated into con- 
sciousness, is just its intensiveness. We are aware first of all 
that an intense stimulus has been presented and only after the 
first shock is over and the reflex adjustment of the sense-organ is 
complete, do we attend more specifically to the quality for pur- 
poses of further adjustment to the situation. We believe that 
it is only by a playing with terminology that one can escape the 
statement of the fact that the shift that takes place in the divert- 
ing of attention from intensity to quality is nothing other than a 
shift in relative clearnes. Titchener writes as follows: "When 
we are thus attending to extension or duration we may have very 
hazy ideas indeed about intensity and quality; precisely as, when 
we are observing intensity, we may have very hazy ideas about 
quality and duration/' 84 There would therefore appear to be 
discernible differences of clearness in the various aspects or 
"attributes" of one and the same sensory experience, so that the 
status of clearness as an attribute of sensation is anomalous in 
this respect, for the doctrine of mental elements could not be 
reconciled with a visual sensation that was characterized at one 
and the same time by two hues, or two tints, or two intensities. 



XII 

But if it be true that within that sum total of attributes that, 
we are told, constitute the sensation, there may exist different 
degrees of clearness as regards the value of the various attributes 
for the attention process, — if this be true, still another difficulty 
would have to be faced in regard to the status of clearness as an 
attribute of sensation. The difficulty in question relates to the 
method of introspection. How do we ascertain the fact of 
clearness of sensory content? It was averred a while ago that 
we might attend to some one of the attributes of sensory experi- 
ence whilst the other aspects receded into the background of the 



32 CARL RAHN 

field. Is this true also in the case of the attribute of clearness? 
Can we, for instance, become clearly aware that a given sensory 
content possesses a low degree of clearness? And if so, is the 
process by which we thus become aware of the attribute of 
clearness in any sense similar to that by which the other attributes 
of a sensory experience come into the foreground of conscious- 
ness? We would not raise a host of metaphysical queries in an 
attempt to give historical dignity and a backing of legitimacy to 
our question : we will therefore consider it on purely psychological 
grounds. The method of psychology, as of physcal science, says 
Titchener, is observation. Yet to distinguish it from the latter, 
we call it introspection, whereas the observation of physical 
phenomena is better referred to as inspection. Still there is an 
essential likeness between the two methods. In matching color 
on the color-wheel, in determining the number of tones in a chord 
that is being struck, there is practically no difference between 
introspection and inspection. "You are using the same method 
that you would use in counting the swings of a pendulum, or 
taking readings from a galvanometer scale, in the physical labora- 
tory. There is a difference in subject-matter : the colors and the 
tones are dependent, not independent experiences : but the method 
is essentially the same." 72 When we come to consider more com- 
plex mental experience, however, it would appear at first blush 
as if the parallel between the methods of physics and psychology 
could not be maintained' — as in analysing the mental reaction 
called out by the presentation of some word-stimulus, or in an 
attempt to observe a feeling or an emotion. "If you try to report 
the changes in consciousness, while these changes are in progress, 
you interfere with consciousness ; your translation of the mental 
processes into words introduces new factors into that experience 
itself;" 85 and furthermore "cool consideration of an emotion 
is fatal to its very existence ; your anger disappears, your disap- 
pointment evaporates, as you examine it." 87 Direct observation 
of the process while it is going on in consciousness, is therefore 
difficult and one solution of the difficulty is to observe it retro- 
spectively, by making a post mortem examination of it, as it were. 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 33 

But even in cases such as these it is not always absolutely neces- 
sary to employ the retrospective method, for "(a) the observa- 
tions in question may be repeated", and thus stage after stage of 
the emotive process may be made the object of analysis; and 
"moreover, (b) the practiced observer gets into an introspective 
habit, has the introspective attitude ingrained in his system; so 
that it is possible for him, not only to take mental notes while the 
observation is in progress, without interfering with consicousness, 
but even to jot down written notes, as the histologist does while 
his eye is still held to the ocular of the microscope". 73 So much 
for the method of psychology according to Titchener. 

Now let us examine the process by which we become aware of 
clearness as an attribute of sensory content. We saw how in the 
course of everyday experience either quality or intensity of sensa- 
tion might become functionally important and attended to. Thus 
in the case of an intense stimulus suddenly breaking in upon us, 
we are aware at the first moment primarily of its intensiveness, 
and it is only after the first shock is over that we turn our atten- 
tion exclusively upon its quality in our endeavor to adjust our- 
selves to this new factor that has been precipitated into the 
situation of the moment. If our purpose at the moment were 
the gathering of psychological data, we would have, then and 
there, the material for it. But our purpose happens to be to get 
ahead with the day's business and we therefore deal accordingly 
with the object that had served as an adequate stimulus for that 
mental experience in which clearness attached first to the intensity 
and then to the qualitative aspect of a certain sensory content. In 
attending to the quality of the stimulus for the purpose of discov- 
ering what it may mean, I am in truth using the method of inspec- 
tion. I can continue to regard its quality and get it over and over 
again in a series of perceptual pulses, subject, of course, always to 
the limitations imposed by fatigue and by the "fluctuation of 
attention". So too, I could dwell upon its intensity, if necessary. 
One by one, these various aspects might be made to loom up in 
the foreground of consciousness. Transferred into the labora- 
tory, the experimenter can introduce qualitative changes into the 



34 CARL RAHN 

stimulus and I would report change in sensory content pari passu 
as it occurs. I might be clearly aware that the sensation as it 
exists in consciousness possesses a very low intensity. So too, 
one might say, duration, and, if one chose, presumably also, ex- 
tensity of sensation might become the object of our introspections 
in a way that would be essentially like inspection. But how is it 
with the attribute of clearness ? Can we focus attention upon it as 
we can in the case of the other attributes ? Here a difficulty pre- 
sents itself. Introspection as regards clearness would seem to be 
impossible in the sense of inspection. The moment we would 
dwell upon the clearness aspect the content comes into the focus 
of the field of attention, i.e., there is a change in the aspect con- 
cerning which we would introspect. Thus it has come to pass 
that most of that body of knowledge that the psychologist has 
gathered concerning sensation has been obtained under conditions 
of maximal clearness; and it is one of the chief counts against 
the attempts to make the unanalysed content equivalent to the 
analysed content, for it must yet be shown whether analytic atten- 
tion does not perhaps effect other changes in the sensory content 
besides that of clearness. But as regards clearness itself, a low 
degree of clearness can under normal conditions be determined 
only retrospectively. While I can attend without difficulty one 
by one to the qualities that are presented to me for purposes of 
introspection, until I have reported upon the entire series; and 
while I can attend one by one to the whole gamut of possible 
intensities that can be experimentally induced, and note introspec- 
tively in the sense of inspection my conscious reaction upon each 
one of them while it exists in consciousness ; — while an observer 
can do these things in the case of quality and intensity, the situa- 
tion is otherwise when we come to clearness as an attribute of 
sensation. The ordinary observer, at least, will have great diffi- 
culty in noting introspectivly varying degrees of clearness without 
thereby bringing the content to the focus of attention, i.e., making 
it maximally clear. Introspection, in the sense of inspection, 
calm regarding of the content without thereby changing it with 
respect to that aspect of it with which we are for the time being 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 35 

primarily concerned, is impossible in the case of clearness. He 
cannot ordinarily note thus the gamut of possible clear- 
nesses while they are still a part of conscious experience. Our 
difficulty in introspecting (in the sense of inspecting) a sensa- 
tion in a state of low degree of clearness, is in a sense similar 
to that which we experience when we attempt to introspect a 
feeling while it is still in consciousness. The feeling vanishes 
when we would attend to it. The unclear sensation may not 
vanish, to be sure, upon our turning to it, but it is changed with 
respect to that condition concerning which we were seeking 
knowledge. 



XIII 

We would now ask : What are the implications of this differ- 
ence in the status of one of our "attributes"? It appears that 
not every aspect of sensory experience can be attended to intro- 
spectively in the sense of inspection. If this be so, then it means 
that all that large section of our sensory experience that falls 
within the outer zones of the field of attention cannot be gotten 
at by direct introspection, but must be attacked by the same 
methods as are used in the case of emotion and other complex 
processes that are interfered with when directly attended to. In 
other words, if clearness be accounted an attribute of sensation, 
then there is one respect in which it may behave in a manner that 
is usually regarded as a differentia of emotional and of "complex" 
processes. Not that at this point we would infer from this that 
clearness must therefore be conceived as partaking essentially of 
the character of an attribute of an affective or a complex content. 
Only this: that it seemingly makes the status of clearness in a 
certain sense unique among the attributes of sensation, if we 
regard it as such. And furthermore it raises the question whether 
the noting of this fact may not have been operative as a motive 
in the minds of some psychologists in making clearness the attri- 
bute of some other category, either of content or of function or 



36 CARL RAHN 

activity. Thus Stumpf says, "Phenomena with their attributes 
are given us, stand over against us as somewhat objective, that 
possesses its own laws, a somewhat that we have merely to 
describe and acknowledge". (Die Erscheinungen sind uns mit 
ihren Eigenschaften gegeben, stehen uns als etwas Objektives. 
Eigengesetzliches gegenuber, das wir nur zu beschreiben und 
anzuerkennen haben.)® 9 Now this means nothing other than 
that it is essentially of the nature of phenomena, among them 
sensation elements, to be present in our consciousness in such a 
way that they may be calmly inspected and noted while they are 
a part of our experience. They stand over against us endowed 
with a certain objectivity, governed by laws of their own. Clear- 
ness for Stumpf does not behave in this way, and it is significant 
that he does not make it an attribute of sensory content, but of 
the activity in which the sensory content is manipulated. It is 
the attribute of one of the Funktionen, viz., the activity of 
awareness, of apprehension. 

Thus we are in a position to understand somewhat better 
Stumpf's doctrine concerning the relation of his phenomena and 
Funktionen. We become conscious of the Funktionen, in this 
specific case of the activity of awareness with its attribute of 
clearness, "by a direction of consciousness that is other than that 
in which we receive our knowledge of colors". He cites Locke, 
Leibnitz, Sigwart, Lotze, Brentano, Dilthey, Volkelt, Erdmann, 
and Lipps. All of these, says Stumpf, "believe that they are 
able to grasp the psychic life in its very weaving, whereas colors 
and tones are apprehended merely as contents of acts of aware- 
ness, i.e., these sensations are apprehended as contents in a special 
class of psychic activities". 52 

Let us turn now to a consideration of what may be meant by 
this "other direction of consciousness" by means of which the 
psychic activities are apprehended. The classic passage in Locke 
on this point reads as follows : "The mind, receiving the ideas 
mentioned in the foregoing chapters from without, when it turns 
its view inward upon itself, and observes its own actions about 
those ideas it has, takes from thence other ideas, which are as 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 37 

capable to be objects of its contemplation as any of those it re- 
ceived from foreign things." 38 Some of the "modes of these 
simple ideas of reflection" are "remembrance, discerning, reason- 
ing, judging". Let us compare this "turning of the view inward" 
with the method of observation mentioned by Titchener. He 
tells us that "the practiced observer has the introspective habit 
ingrained in his system", so that he can "take mental notes" and 
even "jot down written notes",while the observation is in progress, 
and that he can do this "without interfering with consciousness", 
just "as the histologist does while his eye is still held to the ocular 
of the microscope". 88 If the phrase "without interfering with 
consciousness" has any meaning here, it can mean only this : 
that at this point at least we could not count on Titchener's 
agreement with us as regards our analysis of the status of clear- 
ness, when we would attend to this aspect of some marginal 
experience, qua marginal ; for we believe that it is inherent in the 
very nature of consciousness that the moment we would intro- 
spect, in the sense of inspect, that which is now marginal, our 
attempt to do so results in making it focal, and thus interferes 
with, changes, in a very real sense, the ongoing consciousness 
with respect to that very aspect of the activity that we would 
"inspect". But applying the phrase to our attempt to introspect 
such aspects of consciousness as the degree of certainty in judg- 
ment, or such an experience as denial or affirmation (Funktionen 
for Stumpf, for Titchener, very probably, "attitudes"), it can 
mean only this: that he can look inward upon the doubt and 
study it as to its psychological constitution without defeating the 
ends of the activity in progress, and what is more, without chang- 
ing the quality of the conscious "feel" of the "attitude" in 
question. Stumpf, we believe, would take issue with him here. 
He believes that they may be "given" in a very real sense in 
consciousness, but "by another direction of consciousness". This 
we would interpret as meaning that while "doubt" as a conscious 
somewhat is just as truly present as is the sensory experience of 
coldness, it is doomed to remain forever peculiarly marginal. 
Let us turn now for a moment to Locke, whom Stumpf cites in 



38 CARL RAHN 

support of his position. It may be that we may get some further 
light there as to just what it is that constitutes this other class of 
psychical ultimates. 

The account in Locke is too meagre to give us any basis 
for inferring whether or not he would say as Titchener does 
that we can watch the activity from the psychologist's point of 
view without interfering with the normal process, — but he does 
say that we may become conscious of the act aspect, that is, while 
we may not stop to formulate overtly psychological judgments 
concerning it, we nevertheless find that some feeling of activity, 
differing from time to time as the situation varies, colors our 
immediate experience in the course of our efforts to adapt our- 
selves in our world. Referring to different aspects of this activity 
consciousness, we may say that we have had a memory experience, 
an emotion, a volition, or what not. According to Locke, we 
might be conscious of these activities while attention was busied 
in the main with the materials with which we are dealing. But 
the activity aspect is not singled out by attention in the same way 
as is the perceptual content. . . . When Locke says that anyone 
can observe the actions of perception and volition within himself, 
he is without a doubt referring to something immediately experi- 
enced. These facts of immediate experience are the empirical 
data for the ideas : thinking, willing. While the concepts of 
"thinking" and "willing" may arise as a result of discursive 
thinking, they yet have a basis in immediate conscious experience, 
viz. : the "operations of the mind about its ideas, including the 
passions sometimes arising from them, such as the satisfaction or 
uneasiness arising from any thought". The "foreign things" 
give rise to "ideas of sensation". But besides the consciousness 
of such percepts and ideas, we are aware also of the "operations" 
of our mind. 37 Yet normally it would interfere with the busi- 
ness in hand if we were to turn to attend to these operations. To 
attend to the operations of the mind is not the normal pursuit of 
man, and these awarenesses of mental operations leads a penumbral 
existence off on the margin of the field in the form of vague 
"feels", meanings, or what not. Most often, probably, they 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 39 

remain below the threshold without conscious existence. Yet at 
other times these awarenesses may become very vivid indeed, 
and if our interests have a psychological bent, these experiences 
yield material for our ideas of psychological categories. This 
elaboration into concepts is the work of "reflection" for Locke; 
for Titchener it probably occurs in the process "of taking mental 
notes while the observation is in progress, without interfering 
with consciousness". It is true, therefore, as Stumpf says, that 
Locke subscribes to the doctrine that we are conscious of, and 
observe in ourselves, the "actings of the mind", such as "percep- 
tion, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing". 
"This source of ideas every man has wholly within hmself ; and 
though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external 
objects, yet it is very like, and might properly be called internal 
sense." For Locke, then, consciousness may be analysed into per- 
cepts, memories, and imaginations (in Locke's own terminology, 
all these would be comprehended under the term : ideas of sensa- 
tion), on the one hand, and consciousness of mental "actings" 
(giving rise in "reflection" to ideas of reflection), on the other. 
In this sense it would appear that Stumpf is correct in claiming 
that Locke taught the possibility of an awareness of Funktion 
("actings of the mind"). 



XIV 

Thus Locke and Stumpf. Turning to Titchener, we have seen 
that for him the immediately given is the percept. It is this that 
the psychologist analyses into its elements. Titchener is clear on 
this point : that the sensation and image elements that he analyses 
out are not given as elements in the immediate experience of 
the subject, but come to consciousness united into a whole, the 
percept. His immediately given then is that totality that Locke 
called an "idea". It is what James has in mind when he speaks of 
"the objective fact, known to us as the peppermint taste". It 
is my immediate consciousness of the peppermint, before I note 



40 CARL RAHN 

that it is made up of certain sensations of temperature, smell, 
contact. Now as to Titchener's position as regards the other 
category, the category of psychic Funktion, of mental activity. 
He says, "there are, in a certain sense, a hearing, a feeling, a 
thinking, which are distinguishable from the tone and the pleasure 
and the thought". 93 If they are "distinguishable" aspects, one 
might ask why they are not "attributes" in the same sense as the 
other "attributes", even though they be not "ultimates" as Stumpf 
would make them ? Logically, it would be somewhat inconsistent 
to leave them aside, whilst demanding that certain other "attri- 
butes" which were obtained by a very similar process of "distin- 
guishing", of analysis, or what not, be attributed to some psy- 
chological ultimate. And this is practically what he does do when 
he says : "Only the distinction comes to me, not as that of act and 
content, but as that of temporal course and qualitative specificity 
of a single process. . . . The way in which a process runs its 
course, that is its 'act', that is what constitutes it sensing or feel- 
ing or thinking; the quality which is thus in passage, that is its 
'content', that is what constitutes it tone or pleasure." 92 Act 
and content are for Titchener two ways of looking at the same 
"process". But we ask: Are not for him the singling out of 
"intensity" and "quality" also nothing more nor less than "two 
ways of looking at 'one and the same process' " ? The "acting" is 
the "temporal course" of his particular types of psychological 
ultimates, probably their "durational" aspect. The question may 
become of fundamental interest, however, for certain psycholo- 
gists, whether these two ways of looking at the same "process" 
are in any way a factor in the "process". But Titchener is satis- 
fied to analyse the "single process" into its elementary processes : 
sensations, images, feelings, and to describe these with reference 
to their "attributes". He summarily dismisses the claim of the 
"act psychology" by calling it a psychology of reflection, a psy- 
chology in which "logical construction has forestalled introspec- 
tive examination". 93 He believes that "we have in the idea of 
'process' an instrument of analysis that is adequate to its task, 
and that it relieves us from the fatal necessity of asking help from 
logic". 94 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 41 

XV 

Leaving aside Titchener's imputation that the act psychology 
is a substitution of logic for psychology, let us turn to Stumpf 
and note once more the distinction that he believes to be funda- 
mental between his phenomena and his Funktionen. A psycholo- 
gist such as Stumpf might say to Titchener : Having admitted 
the "givenness", the "distinguishableness", of the act aspect, 
would you assert that this aspect comes under the same category 
as the attributes of intensity and sensory quality? That the 
durational aspect, the "temporal course" is sufficient to account 
for the manifold variety seemingly occur ing as regards this 
activity aspect? Stumpf would affirm you cannot. No other 
predicate of the activity aspect excepting it be that of duration, 
can be attributed to the phenomenal aspect. There is a degree of 
clearness of apprehension, degree of certainty of judgment, etc. 
(c.f. Section IV above). As regards the second, Stumpf main- 
tains by definition, that these aspects of activity, cannot be at- 
tributed to the some category as the other attributes of sensory 
experience. And his distinction is made on the basis of difference 
in behavior. 

Stumpf says that his phenomena with their attributes stand 
over against us as somewhat objective that we have merely to 
describe and acknowledge. These phenomena, then, as thus 
defined, would, it seems to us, come unequivocally under the 
head of those aspects of conscious experience which could be 
examined introspectively in a manner which would be essentially 
the same as inspection as it is employed in the physical sciences, 
as over against retrospection. Here then is a point of departure 
from which we can start out and examine the status of several 
fundamental categories in the two psychological systems. 

Titchener and Stumpf would agree in this, we believe; that 
the sensory and imaginal material that constitutes the bedrock 
of the perceptual and ideational experiences — that this sensory 
experience is capable of fixation in such a way that it may be 
"inspected" (excepting of course the attribute of clearness in the 
case of Titchener's "sensation elements", which Stumpf would 



42 CARL RAHN 

make an attribute of Funktion), in such a way that it may be 
calmly regarded, observations made concerning its duration, qual- 
ity, intensity and any changes that occur in these aspects from 
time to time. Stumpf's statement concerning his phenomena 
would indicate agreement on this point. 

On the other hand we believe that if we were to take the list 
of categories of Funktionen, of mental acts in Stumpf's sense, 
we should find that the attributes in terms of which they are 
according to him given to us, will show that these, as aspects of 
consciousness, must be subsumed under the second heading on 
the basis of behavior when attended to introspectively. They 
are all aspects that change or evanesce when attention would focus 
upon them as psychical. "Cool consideration of an emotion is 
fatal to its very existence ; your anger disappears, your disappoint- 
ment evaporates as you examine it," says Titchener. 86 Try to 
fixate the willing, judging, comparing, and the other intellectual 
acts, in so far as they throw any reflection into consciousness over 
and above the object willed, the idea judged, the contents, whether 
perceptual or ideational, that are compared, — try to fixate these, 
and the activity is balked. The degree of clearness, according to 
Stumpf the attribute of the Funktion of awareness or appre- 
hension, cannot, we saw, be directly attended to for purposes of 
psychological study. The same thing holds of doubt. Try to 
fix attention upon the doubt as a mental somewhat and the 
"doubt" consciousness is replaced by something other that may 
be sensation or what not, but it no longer is that consciousness 
which everyone, when called upon, refers to as doubt. So too, 
the consciousness of certainty in judgment. So too in the case 
of that "plus" which gives to an experience memory tang rather 
than a perceptual coloring, or that which constitutes negation 
rather than affirmation' — so too, in recognition desiring, etc. In 
all these there is a very actual consciousness that is not focal, 
but marginal, and that eludes us when we try to introspect it 
directly, in the sense of inspection, in the sense in which we seem 
to inspect the "object" with which we are dealing during these 
experiences, i.e. in the percept, the memory image, the matter-of- 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 43 

fact assented to or dissented from. It is here that the psycholo- 
gist appears to be under the unfortunate curse that the moment 
he would lay his hands directly on one of these states of con- 
sciousness it turns to dust and ashes at his touch. Try to catch 
the doubt, as it passes through the living consciousness, and you 
destroy it and come away with shreds of sensation located in 
muscle of head and eyelid and mouth. Try to introspect the 
consciousness of certainty and what just now was a very vital 
aspect of immediate experience turns to nothingness. You can 
experience it, but you cannot inspect it. And it seems it is there- 
fore that Stumpf says that "it is by another direction of conscious- 
ness" that we become aware of the Fitnktionen. While one might 
have welcomed greater explicitness on this point, we do not believe 
that we are guilty of misinterpretation when we infer that this 
statement has reference to the method by which they may become 
objects of psychological knowledge for us. We may infer that 
they are intrinsically so constituted, that they may not be appre- 
hended introspectively in the same way as are the phenomena. 
We are further convinced that this is the real ground for 
Stumpf s distinction, between phenomena and Funktionen by the 
fact that he makes clearness an attribute not of phenomena but 
of Funktion — and we have already seen that clearness as an 
aspect of conscious experience seemingly behaved differently from 
the usually recognized sensation attributes when we purposed to 
gather introspective data concerning it. For these reasons we 
believe that we are justified in the interpretation just given 
and we shall proceed to a study of the legitimacy and the 
implications of a classification of psychological processes on the 
basis of the manner in which they behave when an attempt is made 
to observe them. Applying this provisional criterion to Stumpf's 
categories, it would appear that his phenomena would come under 
the head of those conscious processes that can be examined intro- 
spectively in a manner which would be essentially the same as 
"inspection," and our justification in proceeding thus lies in the 
character of Stumpf's definition which is couched essentially in 
terms of the behavior alluded to above. 



44 CARL RAHN 

As regards procedure, therefore, we cannot agree with Titch- 
ener that the method of psychology is essentially the same as that 
of the physical sciences, viz., that of immediate inspection of the 
material that constitutes the objects of the science; for it appears 
that some aspects or complexes of consciousness normally cannot 
be directly inspected without interfering with that aspect with 
reference to which we are seeking psychological data ; it may be, 
perhaps, that the methods can be the same when we are dealing 
with certain aspects of consciousness, but it must be essentially 
different when we are dealing with these others that are "tran- 
sient, elusive, slippery," those that "refuse to be observed while 
they are in passage." So long as "cool consideration of an 
emotion is fatal to its very existence," so long as "your anger 
disappears, your disappointment evaporates, as you examine it," 
so long as we must thus qualify the statement that the psycholo- 
gist observes his objects in the same way as the physicist does his, 
just so long must we recognize a difference in behavior on the part 
of the mental processes that we are studying, a difference in 
behavior that necessitates a different mode of attack on the part 
of the psychologist; and we must be careful to refrain from 
stating propositions that may in any way be taken as general 
when in reality they are particular or qualified, such as "intro- 
spection is very like inspection," "in general, the method of 
psychology is much the some as the method of physics," "the 
method of the physical and the psychological sciences is sub- 
stantially the same." 74 



XVI 

Following this line of immanent criticism of our psychological 
systems, we have come to the distinction between phases of 
conscious experience that are amenable to immediate survey, and 
other phases that under normal conditions elude inspection for 
psychological purposes, that cannot be focused upon without 
changing or destroying them. By means of this distinction let 




SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 45 

us examine the several psychological categories and let us note 
just what happens when the conscious experiences designated by 
them are attended to. There is the Funktion of Stumpf, the 
"attitude" of Titchener, the meaningful percept and idea — all to be 
examined in this manner; and finally the "sensation" of current 
psychology, which seemingly has in common with Stumpf's 
phenomena that it may be examined, attended to, "inspected," 
without changing it or interfering with it as a conscious 
"process." 



XVII 

Referring to the experience of doubt which Locke and Stumpf 
would designate as an "acting of the mind," as a Funktion, we 
saw that it may be definitely an aspect of conscious experience, 
yet when attention turns from that which is doubted and tries 
to catch the doubt itself, it will surprise not the doubt, but per- 
haps certain muscular sensations mediated by contractions of the 
facial muscles. There are to be found nowhere in the litera- 
ture, since James' inimitable chapter on the will, finer and 
keener introspective accounts of -just such "catchings" of these 
fleeting mental states, of "attitudes", than those recently given by 
Titchener in his survey of the "experimental psychology of 
thinking". 96 On the side of investigations of muscular expres- 
sion belonging to various forms of intellectual activity, there is 
excellent material collected by Sancto de Sanctis in his "Mimicry 
of Thinking". But the objection is unanswerable that these 
kinaesthetic sensations that attention lights upon when it pounces 
upon such a subtle psychosis as a state of doubt, are not the 
psychic equivalents of the state itself. As Titchener says concern- 
ing emotion : "a group of organic sensations is, after all, a group 
of organic sensations; palpitation of the heart, is not, in itself, the 
emotion of dread, and blushing is not, in itself, the emotion of 
shame." 81b Concerning recognition, again, which is essentially 
of the nature of Funktion, Angell says ; "In all instances of con- 



46 CARL RAHN 

scious recognition however, it must be remembered that the 
mental act of explicit recognition is something unique ; something 
which is not simply synonymous with the accompanying condi- 
tions which we have been describing." 1 In the case of emotion 
(which the Funktion-psychologen rank among the psychic activi- 
ties) we find the problem already attacked. A theory such as 
the James-Lange theory of the emotions avers that in this total 
state the emotional tang is given, in a large measure at least, by 
the sensory back-stroke arising from certain organic and muscu- 
lar reactions that have been reflexly set up in the organism. The 
facts at the basis of this theory are ascertainable by means of the 
"pouncing" above described and by the method of objective 
observation. The "pouncing" reveals certain organic and kinaes- 
thetic experiences; objective observation of the person during 
the emotional state itself shows certain objective movements, and 
apparatus properly applied would reveal certain circulatory and 
respiratory changes which tally with the subject's introspective 
account of what was present at the time when the emotional 
aspect of the total experience was "pounced" upon. Xow in 
using these data in the explanation of the emotional psychosis, 
the psychologist does not affirm that the consciousness of the 
analyzing experience is the same as the emotional phase itself ; but 
he does believe that he has grounds for assuming that the sensory 
stimulation that functions in mediating the "sensations" precipi- 
tated by the analysis, was operative in the original state and lent 
color to it. The modern psychologist is too conscious of the 
"Jabberwock of the psychologist's fallacy" to be guilty of com- 
mitting it at a point where it is so easily detectable as here. He 
realizes that the emotion is not the equivalent of sensation a plus 
sensation b plus certain affective elements, etc., that are the 
products of analysis, — but that the emotion was experienced 
differently, not under conditions of analytic attention ready to 
note any organic or kinaesthetic sensations that might arise, but 
as a unified conscious reaction upon a stimulus that is an adequate 
provocative of that particular form of racial response. 

The method of investigation of the consciousness of intellectual 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 47 

Funktionen and of "attitudes" must be essentially the same as 
that in the case of emotion. The introspective data gathered after 
the manner described by Titchener, the objective expressive 
signs accompanying the different types of concentration and 
intellectual process, as given by deSanctis, introspective obser- 
vation (in the sense of retrospection) as to how far the changes 
in the pattern of the percepts and ideas, that are at the focus 
of attention, may contribute to this consciousness of mental 
activity, — these will constitute an analytic account of the activity 
consciousness. And while it is thus analytic, such an account will 
not fail to do justice to the fact that the "feel" of the activity 
consciousness as a real vital experience appeared to consist in a 
somewhat quite other than merely the consciousness of the 
sensory factors just described. Indeed, such an account will 
recognize that while it is necessary to attribute some function to 
kinaesthetic stimulation and to changes in the content at the focm 
of attention, in bringing about the consciousness of psychic 
activity — this function will yet be different in the original ex- 
perience than under conditions of analytic attention. One differ- 
ence in behavior of the sensory factor is this, that just as in 
emotional experience, it is not at the focus but at the margin of 
field of attention. All considerations that were urged a while 
ago on this point must be taken into account. ... To determine 
these differences in the sensory content under different condi- 
tions of clearness, i.e., of focal and marginal apprehension, is one 
of the problems that is just now confronting psychology. Another 
difference is this: that in the original experience these various 
stimuli functioned in evoking an unanalysed unified response of 
consciousness. And, we believe, closely related to this, is the 
third difference. The difference in the "feel" of these stimuli 
in the original and in the analytic experience. In the original 
experience this sensory stimulation gave rise to a different "feel" 
from that which arises in analytic attention: there it signified 
doubting, affirming, negating, desiring, rejecting, attending, pur- 
posing, analysing, believing, discriminating; here it signifies 
so many sensory-"elements"-precipitated-in-pursuance-of-our- 



48 CARL RAHN 

attempt-todiscover,-to-know,-what-doubting-affirming,-purposing 
-really-is. It is this "meaning" or "feel" aspect, we believe, that 
Stumpf hypostatizes as his awareness of psychic Funktion which 
for him is "immediately given" in the same sense in which his 
"phenomena" are immediately given. 

We trust that we will not be misunderstood in designating the 
consciousness of Funktion, of act, a meaning. It will be better 
perhaps to leave this term to express the analogous aspect of per- 
cepts, ideas and concepts, and to speak, in the case of the Funk- 
tionen, of the "feel" of the act, without of course, implying nec- 
essarily the presence of affective factors in this "consciousness of 
act". But the problem is for us essentially the same in the case 
of the "feel" of the mental act, and the "meaning" of a percept 
or idea. It suffices here to note that in the case of the conscious- 
ness of psychic Funktionen and of attitudes, when such arises 
within the total consciousness, it is the analogue of the meaning 
aspect in the case of percept or idea consciousness. It is this that 
is changed, that evanesces, that will not suffer immediate fixation. 



XVIII 

Let us turn now to an examination of the percept and idea at 
the hand of our provisional criterion of behavior under condi- 
tions of immediate fixation. I glance over a page before me and 
a word catches my eye. The consciousness of the word is a per- 
cept. There is a presentation and it comes to me meaningfully. If 
I continue to dwell upon its meaning, this appears to remain the 
same, only it becomes what we are pleased to call : more explicit. 
Images arise in consciousness organically connected with the 
meaning. The totality is the percept. Analytically there is the 
sensory stimulus, the visual impression of the letters on the page. 
Added to this there may be in consciousness an auditory image of 
the word, and kinaesthetic images, or even sensations, of its 
enunciation. But this is not all, there is the meaning. The 
visual impression, the auditory image, the kinaesthesia ;< — these 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 49 

are not the meaning — they "call up" the meaning. Dwelling 
upon this meaning aspect results in making "explicit" what be- 
fore, at the first glance at the word, appeared "implicit" ; and the 
process of becoming explicit is the unfolding of a new perceptual 
and ideational complex, germane to the initial ones, yet not the 
same. This new complex may again be analysed into sensory or 
image elements with a halo or fringe of meaning. Try to fixate 
this halo or fringe and once more it becomes explicit in the form 
of another idea and so our attempt to fixate the meaning as a 
psychic content leads us ever on to other though related ideas. 
The attempt to introspect the meaning aspect of percepts and 
ideas, then, is impossible in the sense of immediate inspection. 
The point we would stress here is only this : that the attempt to 
"catch" the meaning results in the coming into consciousness of 
a new ideational complex with its new meaning — or else you find 
yourself contemplating the objective stimulus, qua stimulus, that 
had given rise to the original percept — or else you "come to" 
from out of a period of seeming nothingness. 3 



XIX 

But let us see what happens when we attempt the analysis by 
concentrating attention not on the meaning aspect of the percept, 
but upon the stimulus aspect. We must remember that in the 
ordinary perceptual experience there is no differentiation of these 
two aspects, and it is only because in problematic situations the 
two have become differentiated, that we assume that every actual 
percept of ordinary experience has these two aspects. The exper- 
ience in which the distinction first comes to consciousness may be 
described as follows: Say that we are looking at a word on a 
page and fix attention upon its visual form, upon its sound, upon 
our enunciation of it. It carries with it its accustomed "meaning," 
but presto! we suddenly say: "Curious — that this collection of 
visual things, this sound, these enunciatory movements, should 
mean that." If we continue to look at the word or contemplate 



50 CARL RAHN 

its sound, or the feel of it in our throats, its meaning becomes 
more and more effectually estranged from it. Attention is busied 
with noting parts and relations in the sensory complex, and this 
thing that for us was ever so familiar now becomes a monster of 
strangeness. New associations flash through our minds that are 
a result of our attention simply to the form of the word. 

It is in experiences such as these that the psychological dis- 
tinction between stimulus and its meaning has its rise. For 
many persons, children especially, this process of divorcing the 
auditory, visual and kinaesthetic stuff, both sensory and imaginal, 
from the "meaning" of a word possesses a great fascination. 
This process, this act of separating, may therefore become a 
veritable habit and can be operative not only in the case of 
words, but also in the case of the perception of the common 
objects of daily life. It is this that the modern mystics have 
made the central feature of their method of reaction upon 
the experience that the life of our day yields them. It is thus 
that they re-introduce into their world the sense of mystery that 
for the common run of men is fast becoming an unknown thing. 
The extent of scientific control of our objective world has become 
so great that small margin is left for arousing reactions of won- 
der, awe and mystery. Yet by the apprehension of the significance 
of the psychological process just outlined, the modern man and 
woman of the "mystic temper" has found the way that leads back 
into the world of mystery, a world more wonderful by far than 
any wherein dwelt their predecessors of early days, for the modern 
mystic enters the world of beauty not through a narrow range of 
experiences as did the mystic of old ; no, every experience of the 
common life is to-day the gateway that leads thither. . . . But we 
shall return anon to this relation between "stimulus" and 
"meaning." 

The citation of cases of the genesis of the distinction between 
stimulus and meaning is not made for the purpose of leading up 
to a discussion of what meaning is, but rather for the purpose of 
noting what happens when attention tries to analyze the percept 
by focusing upon the presentation aspect. We saw that focusing 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 51 

attention upon the meaning aspect resulted not in new light on 
what meaning "really" was, but tended to bring into consciousness 
other though related ideational content. We see now that atten- 
tion to the stimulus aspect likewise tends to disintegrate the 
original percept, divorcing the stimulus from the original meaning 
and bringing it, the stimulus, to consciousness in a new way; i.e., 
it acquires new meanings that arise in consciousness with the new 
pattern into which the stimulus falls under our continued inspec- 
tion. And if our interests are psychological, the stimulation will 
take on the meaning of "sensations" and "images" that have 
certain "attributes" with reference to which we may examine 
them. The old meaning has fled and instead there is the new 
one that accrues to the stimulus through the new situation and its 
dominant purpose of psychological analysis. The meaning is 
gone, but the "sensations" remain. We see therefore once more 
that now when the distinction between stimulus and meaning has 
already become ours and we attempt to get at the percept by 
fixating attention upon the stimulus aspect, the original experience 
is changed in the process, the original meaning evanesces and we 
find that analytic attention is contemplating a congeries of "sen- 
sations," or in the case of the idea, an "image"-complex. 

So our attempt to "inspect" a percept or an idea results in the 
precipitation of "sensations" in a process analogous to the one in 
which we erstwhile attempted to fixate an aspect of consciousness 
giving us the "feel" of some mental "activity", an awareness of 
hesitation, of doubt, of concentration, or what not. There we 
saw that the "feel" evanesced and that attention was focused 
either upon "organic attitude and its kinaesthetic representa- 
tion," 96 or else there was an immediate memory of that phase of 
the perceptual and ideational process that was going on in the 
original experience at the moment when the "feel" of activity was 
present. So, too, here, in the case of our attempt to fixate the 
percept we find that it is impossible to introspect in the sense of 
"inspection" without interfering with the conscious activity that 
is going on. The "meaning" evanesces and we find that atten- 
tion is busied with the contemplation of the "sensations" that 



52 CARL RAHN 

are mediated by the stimulus, and of their configuration and 
"attributes." 



XX 

Here, however, in our search we have come upon something: 
in the way of consciousness that seemingly can be examined, in 
the words of Titchener, by a method that is substantially the 
same as the method of the physical sciences. In the words of 
Stumpf we are now dealing with sensations, one of the classes 
of phenomena that "stand over against us as somewhat objective, 
that possesses its own laws, a somewhat that we have merely to 
describe and acknowledge." And so for the third time we return 
to a consideration of that factor in consciousness that, above all 
others, appears to many of us as most palpable, most substantial 
and least elusive. Yet its palpability, substantiality, relative 
stability, may be only seeming; though compared with other 
aspects of conscious life, it appears like a great rock into whose 
shadow we may ever return, from our wearisome chase after the 
psychical. But Trdvra petand "the eternal hills are little by little 
breaking up and wearing away," and in that "great rock" 
changes, too, may be relentlessly going on. Figures aside — let us 
examine likewise the behavior of the sensory aspect under condi- 
tions of introspective attention with a view to discovering in what 
sense, if any, it may be said that it can be "inspected" without 
introducing changes into it, without interfering with it. 

Let us begin by taking Titchener' s example illustrative of what 
is for him unambiguously a case of sensory experience. "Take 
one of the familiar puzzle pictures, a picture which represents, we 
will say, a house and a garden, and somewhere in which there is 
concealed the outline of a human face. As you search for the 
face, the contents of the whole picture are at the conscious focus. 
Suddenly you find it: and what happens? Why, as you do so, 
the picture drops clean away from the focus; the face stands 
out with all imaginable clearness, and the house and garden are 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 53 

no clearer than the feel of the paper between your fingers. The 
experience is very striking, as I have described it: it is more 
striking still, if the face bafBes you, and you go off on false scents. 
For every time that you think that you have found the hidden 
outline, the picture slips from you, — slips, to come back with a 
mental jerk as you realize your failure." The "mental jerk" is 
exquisitely descriptive of the way in which a new meaning attaches 
to a stimulus. For Titchener, to be sure, it is a change of clearness 
in the sensory content, yet the fact that he describes is patent 
enough. What before was, at most, vague, is now made clear, 
and its clearness comes in with a mental jerk. Now it is in this 
moment of mental jerk that we become aware of the fact that 
the previous awareness of this content was far vaguer than just 
at this point of entrance of the interpretation in which the part- 
content is unified and brought to the crest of the wave of sensory 
attention. The point to note is this: that the sudden coming 
to the crest on the part of the part-content may become the 
occasion of the psychological judgment that the sensory content 
which is the basis of the new percept is now clearer by far than 
just a moment ago. And now, having found the face in the 
picture, the psychologist might ask, does the face, or rather, does 
the sensory experience that constitutes the percept "face", do these 
sensations continue at the initial level of clearness or not ? Since 
Titchener has not carried the psychological description further, 
we shall attempt it ourselves. Having found the face, we may do 
one of two things: dismiss the whole matter and turn to the 
business of life, serious or otherwise; or we may continue for a 
while longer to attend to the face. Again, if we do the latter, we 
shall discover later, upon retrospection, that one of three things 
has happened, i. We suddenly found that the sensations mean- 
ing "face" have wandered off, and instead we are thinking of 
other things; further retrospection may discover to us, perhaps, 
the associative nexus that lead from "face" to the present 
ideational content. 2. Or we note that attention continued to 
focus upon the sensory material before us and specifically upon 
that part of the content that was welded together in the face- 



54 CARL RAHN 

percept, but that we did not rest content with the initial total 
face-meaning, and went on to attend to nose, eyes, ears, mouth, 
etc. If in so doing we saw something unusual in the conforma- 
tion of any of these parts, say in the shape of the nose, we note, 
retrospectively once more, that such apprehensions seem to come 
home to us with another mental jerk, slighter perhaps than the 
original one, yet nevertheless with more clearness than attaches 
to one which is representative of an accustomed type. 3. Or in 
the third place we may find retrospectively that we have done 
neither of these things after choosing to busy ourselves further 
with the face, rather than to return to the duties of the day. We 
may have looked again, and then again, at this face, trying per- 
haps to get once more some subtle general impression that was 
imbedded in our original perceptual reaction upon the part- 
content. We continue to look at the face and succeed in getting 
the impression sought, — and then we find that we have gone off 
into a doze, or have even fallen asleep, and are aroused only by 
some sudden stimulus, more or less intense, external or internal. 
The many methods of putting one's self to sleep by "watching 
the sheep jump over the stile", or "looking at the tip of one's 
nose", — all have this element in common, and their effectiveness 
in many instances cannot be questioned. 

We note this third type of general behavior also in the case 
of another actual experience, viz. : in one of the methods used to 
induce hypnotic sleep. A bright metallic ball may be placed before 
us and we are told to center our whole attention upon it. Pur- 
suant to this command we focus upon it. We are to "think" of 
nothing else, but just fixate the ball. Very well, we note the 
form, then its size,' — just try to "apprehend" them. If attention 
would go off on the track of associated ideas, we nevertheless 
feel a "pull" back to the ball. The distribution of light and shade 
upon its surface "strikes" us. Then we note the color, etc., but 
soon the possible ways of apprehending the ball without calling 
up other objects is exhausted and so once more we go through 
the various ways of apprehension just mentioned. While the 
perceptions were thus being repeated over and over, conscious- 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 55 

ness as a whole sinks ever to a lower level, and unless in some 
way the total situation becomes operative by arousing in us 
some strong impulsive reaction such as is involved in the thought 
of the "unworthiness" of this our conduct in which we are giving 
ourselves over into the control of another — unless something of 
this sort happens, we soon are in an hypnotic sleep. 

Again, in the case of ambiguous drawings, when one meaning 
is "in", and the other is "out", the two alternate rapidly enough, 
but never is the stimulus apprehended in both ways at once. It is 
another question how it is that we may "know" that the other 
meaning is possible. And it is beside our purpose to touch upon 
that here, except to note the fact that in the complex conscious- 
ness, it would appear that at times we do have some sort of 
awareness of the potentiality of this other perception. It may be 
that this is analogous to our awareness of the whole to which a 
part belongs, but this problem will occupy us elsewhere. Here let 
us note only that the sensory stimulation tends to release alternately 
two perceptual reactions. In these cases in which the sensory 
stimulation attended to is coterminus in the two interpretations, 
the same "mental jerk" is experienced as in the case of the 
puzzle picture in which a part was abstracted in the perception 
of the hidden face. Since the sensory field that is involved in 
the area of maximal clearness remains the same in the case of 
the ambiguous figure, we can there interpret the facts only by 
saying that that which with interpretation A had been made 
clear, had in the meantime become vague and is once more 
brought to maximal clearness with the coming in of interpreta- 
tion B. 

Now a "sensation" too, behaves as do those supposedly "com- 
plex" objects of perception. In our attempt to "inspect" it, 
Titchener tells us, we may perceive it now with this "attribute" 
in the foreground of attention and now that. 84 Whenever any 
aspect of the sensory stimulation arouses consciousness to a 
maximal degree, it was always a case of a consciousness of that 
particular aspect of the stimulation coming as its meaning. The 
stimulation that finds no reflex pathway over which to discharge 



56 CARL RAHN 

in terms of established reflexes calls out the attention reflex as its 
response and this phase of the impeded activity is precipitated 
into consciousness as the total situation: "what's that?" and thus 
opens the pathways for possible discharge by way of the cortex. 
This coming to clearness in consciousness on the part of the 
various aspects of the "sensation" is in every way like the "mental 
jerk" by which Titchener describes the coming of a new percept. 
In the period just following the jerk there is no awareness of a 
subsidence of the clearness of the "sensation", but such a de- 
crease is inferred from the fact that in the new pulse of perceptual 
reaction, the content once more becomes maximally clear. The 
attempt to keep the sensation in consciousness, as in the case of 
the metal ball experience, results eventually in a lowering of the 
degree of clearness of consciousness to the threshold of sleep. 

Since the attributes behave thus in every way as do the 
meanings of "complex" percepts, coming now one to the focus 
of consciousness and now another, there is some ground to doubt 
the claim of "sensation" that must have all its attributes in con- 
sciousness or none, — to the place of a psychological ultimate. For 
if in the case of ambiguous drawings it is not necessary for the 
two possible meanings to be in consciousness at the same time as 
"percepts", — if indeed it is not only not necessary but in the 
nature of the case impossible to have the two present as "percepts" 
at one and the same time — but that one of them, if it be repre- 
sented in consciousness at all can be present as "idea" merely, 
then it must be shown why the various "attributes", which other- 
wise behave in every way as do the several meanings of ambiguous 
objects, should form an exception in this one respect: their 
inseparable presence in consciousness. 

If it be true that we can single out some one "attribute" of 
sensation, say the brightness of a visual experience, and focus 
upon it, and that "we may have very hazy ideas about quality and 
duration" 84 as when a bright light suddenly flashed before us on 
a dark night, — if in that case brightness be the attribute focused 
upon, and our "ideas" of the other attributes may be very, very 
vague, how are we to determine the point of vagueness beyond 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 57 

which they may not go, unless they would drag the whole sensa- 
tion down below the threshold ? The more restricted attention is, 
at this critical moment of our experience, upon the intensity 
phase, the nearer the danger of its forcing the other aspects below 
the threshold of consciousness — and presto! the whole light sen- 
sation would have to disappear, if it were true that the "nullifying 
of any attribute annihilates the sensation." 84 But it is far from 
our purpose to caricature a venerable concept. We are voicing 
only a growing conviction that the concept is in need of recon- 
struction and reinterpretation. 

We find that the "attributes" of "sensation" behave just as do 
"meanings" in the case of ambiguous drawings. The different 
aspects come to consciousness with the same "mental jerk" ; when 
one "attribute" is in the foreground the others recede, just as two 
interpretations of a stimulus in the case of the drawings; and like 
the attempt to keep some particular conscious state in which a 
certain meaning is imbedded, static, so, too, the attempt to keep 
consciousness narrowed down to some particular "attribute" of 
the "sensation" results in a stultification of the process or the 
annihilation of consciousness. 

We conclude therefore that "attributes" are but some of the 
meanings which the sensory stimulus may arouse in conscious- 
ness. They are the products of a process of abstraction. And 
if the quality appears to be the "body" of the sensation, this is 
attributable, we believe, to the fact that the qualitative reaction, 
the putting over against each other of the various qualities of a 
sense department is the more habitual one.* The meaning of 
quality, therefore, when the sensation is observed introspectively, 
is the one that strikes us most forcibly. On the other hand the 
day we first experience an inkling of the distinction of satura- 
tion from the other qualitative aspects of visual sensation, is a 
"new" day for us; the color experience is henceforth different 
from that of former times, and this increase in richness is 
synchronous with the rise of the distinction. We need not 
necessarily have names for these new aspects, but the point is 

* Ci. above, Section X. 



58 CARL RAHN 

that it is in the analytic process that the new aspect comes to 
consciousness — and to say that it was always present is to blink 
the fact of difference for the sake of theory. The coming of the 
subtler aspects into the field of consciousness dates from the day 
of their first singling out and their presence comes home to us, 
often, before we have a name to affix to our new way of reacting 
to the stimulus. This new way of reacting is the essential thing 
to be noted. To say that the differences existed before they were 
noted, is tantamount to taking the position of those who affirm 
the distinction between psychic reality and conscious actuality 
(Kiilpe), phenomena and Funktion (Stumpf), content and act 
(Brentano). (We might add here also Wundt, who speaks of 
inherent agreements and differences in "psychical processes" on 
the one hand, and of the "comparing activity by which we per- 
ceived" the relations. This latter activity "is different from the 
agreements and differences themselves and additional to 
them".) 107 

Our point here is only this : that the actual sensory experience 
cannot be regarded as being a function only of the physical 
and the physiological processes of the peripheral stimulation and 
afferent nervous impulses, but also of the "set" of the nervous 
system as a whole. If the saturation aspect is to be the "attribute" 
of the "sensation" as a conscious experience, then in the case of 
those who maintain that the conscious response to one and the 
same type of sensory stimulus is different before and after they 
have been put into the attitude in which they become aware of 
that aspect in a definite way, — this aspect cannot be "attributed" 
in the same way to the earlier and later sensory responses as 
actual, conscious experiences. 

Hypothetically we might suppose that the beginnings of the 
"attitudes" that are the condition for this modification of experi- 
ence as sensory, are to be found in certain reflex or instinctive 
responses.* These, accompanied by certain emotional reactions, 
might thus affect the machinery of consciousness. But this would 
be quite other than an "immediate" cognitive reaction by way of 
*See below, Section XXXIII. 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 59 

the cortex to this particular aspect, and would probably be denied 
by all who deal in elementary sensory "ultimates" ; yet it may well 
be that such a statement of the psycho-physical processes involved 
in sensory experience will some day come to be regarded as being 
more serviceable than our altogether too simple conception of 
psychical element. 110 

The "sensation", that by definition "comes into consciousness 
only and always with all its attributes", is a logical construct, in 
the same sense in which every other "ideal object" is a logical 
construct, and psychologically it behaves just as every other 
"complex" object. It is in the conscious reactions now to this 
problematic situation, now to that, as they arise in the breaks in 
more or less automatic habitual responses, that the various "attri- 
butes" that constitute the sensation come to consciousness. The 
admission that within the "sensation" itself there may exist two- 
degrees of clearness, is sufficient to make it complex. Its very 
existence is dependent upon the functioning of a selective activity 
and it depends upon the situation what aspect is to be selected out.. 
And since the "sensation" turns out to be a complex object, that 
behaves like every other object that may come to consciousness, 
with different shades of meaning, then the dwelling upon it, in the 
sense of "inspection", is impossible without interfering with the 
"process" as it normally would go on, for it must result either in 
bringing out new "meanings", aspects that were not in con- 
sciousness in the same way before, or else, as in the case of 
all attempts to keep "meanings" static, in an annihilation of 
consciousness. 



XXI 

Pursuing this line of criticism we come to believe that not 
even in the case of the "sensation" with its attributes can we 
introspect in the sense of inspection without interfering with, or 
modifying, the on-going process. To observe a sensory experi- 
ence results in putting the "sensation" into a new setting. The 



60 CARL RAHN 

system of associations into which it is received is quite other than 
that in which it existed in the original experience." Yet one 
might say that that is the very thing that was wanted. However 
differently we may have reacted to the stimulation under other 
conditions, it is under the guidance of a psychological purpose that 
one would discover what the facts concerning the simplest sort of 
conscious reaction to a given stimulus "really" are. Let it 
mean psychical element, if you will, but in narrowing down con- 
sciousness to the sensation experience, and noting that it, after 
all, was complex, have we not found a type of process that was 
about as simple as could be, viz., the various attributive aspects of 
sensory experience ? And further, one might say, given a psycho- 
logical purpose to start with, we could then have the conditions 
necessary for attending to a psychical process that was ele- 
mentary, simple, in the first place, and secondly was one into 
which introspection would not be introducing changes while the 
observation was in progress. In other words we should have the 
conditions given for a case in which introspection would be very 
like inspection. . . This would verily be a case in point. The 
conditions would be very similar to the case of the attempt to 
induce hypnotic sleep cited a while ago. Only here, the command 
from without is replaced by the purpose within. Yet the two have 
this in common : they would function effectually in cutting off all 
avenues of association excepting the one that means : a particular 
sensation attribute. Having thus stultified mental activity by 
means of the purpose, we fix upon the attribute ; and having fix- 
ated it, what next? . . . We try to get it over and over again, 
just sheer awareness of quality, say. We cannot vary the mon- 
otony by noting the other attributes that we have been accustomed 
to note with regard to a stimulus, so the apprehension of the one 
aspect simply repeats itself. We do not deny that we are con- 
structing a hypothetical case, yet we have some basis for it in 
concrete experience. Who has not at times sat staring at the wall 
of his room, his mind a "perfect blank" except for the awareness 
of the color of the wall? The color would become clear in re- 
peated perceptions, along with the name, perhaps, as an auditory 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 61 

image, or as an incipient enunciation of the word. There appears 
to be somewhat of a perceptual pulse, — whether or not this be a 
function of the "rhythm of attention", so-called, need not detain 
us here. Another instance from the class-room may also be a 
case in point. We go to a session of a class immediately after 
partaking of the noon-day meal. We are drowsy and would doze 
off if it were not that we might be called upon to respond, and 
that bit of "knowledge" is more or less effective in keeping us 
awake. But if it be a lecture, we have a more difficult time of it. 
We soon cease to form the associations that it is the lecturer's 
purpose to call up in our minds. The effort is too great, espe- 
cially if it be a technical mode of expression that is being used. 
The words soon begin to strike us merely as sounds. But for the 
sake of courtesy we try to keep up the appearance of attention, 
and we come back to the fading auditory stimulation with a jerk. 
We shall not here try to analyze out the difference between those 
"comings back" that carry with them the "feel" of being a func- 
tion of the stimulus, and those that appear somehow to be due to 
the inner pulling together resulting from a vague appreciation of 
the social situation. Suffice it to say that purpose and stimulus 
each appear to influence the pulses of perception each in its own 
peculiar way. Now the sound seems to have come back of itself, 
now it appears to have been called back. These meanings appear 
to attach to the percept; they seem to be incorporated into the 
experience of the moment. But the point to note is this : in the 
successive pulses of perception the sound consciousness becomes 
ever vaguer and vaguer, and we are soon off in the land of nod. 
This we realize only after a well-intentioned neighbor has pinched 
our arm. 

To return to the hypothetical case, in which the observer is 
required to fix attention upon one aspect of the sensation and to 
continue to it. Here we do not alternate, as in the case of staring 
at the wall, between the more "fundamental" quality aspect 
and the subtler intensity aspect, but we stick to quality. Have 
we reason to believe that the content at the focus will behave 
differently in this case where the controlling factor is a psycho- 



62 CARL RAHN 

logical purpose, than when consciousness was under no guidance 
of a purpose to single out that aspect, but responded as a result of 
habit to this more "fundamental" aspect? In the class-room 
experience we note the presence of both these factors that might 
be instrumental in introducing changes into the temporal course 
of consciousness. In the case of staring at the wall we had not 
the purpose of keeping the tint "there". Retrospectively, we 
note that the color came and went and that each time the "jerk" 
of its coming appears to have become weaker. There was no 
"pulling ourselves together" to attend. It is only after the 
experience that we become aware of the fact that consciousness 
had narrowed down to so small a perceptual field and that it had 
arrived at so low an ebb. . . In what way the presence of a pur- 
pose would color this experience need not detain us here — 
whether as a vague realization of the situation, or as expressed 
in voluntary control of the process of accommodation of the sense 
organ, or in the mere "feel" of the accommodatory adjustment. 
But if it should be found that when this inner factor is present 
the sensory process at the focus takes a different course than 
when it is not involved, then we would once more have in this 
last instance of observing a single aspect of sensory experience 
likewise a case in which the attempt to introspect it while it is in 
progress, introduces changes into the "process" itself. . . 

Now introspectively, we believe, the way of staring blankly at 
the wall — with the bare awareness of the color quality as the 
sole "object" at the focus of consciousness — is different in its 
course, at least, from the experience in which its perception is 
under the guidance of a purpose. The color consciousness in the 
first instance might be described, perhaps, as a case of simple 
apprehension; the pulses of apprehension have a certain quality 
of their own. The second case, of trying to keep the stimulation 
in consciousness, has in it all those elements that differentiate 
"active" from "passive" attention. But in both cases it might 
be rejoined, it is the context that changes, and not the content at 
the focus. In our hypothetical case we might have both types of 
attention present, the content coming in now in such a way that 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 63 

its coming-in has the "feel" of being a function of the stimulus, 
and now again in such a way that it has the "feel" of being a 
function of the central factor. But the content itself, some might 
say, the quality that is perceived, is not altered by it. We would 
answer that even though this should be shown to be true, the 
process, the temporal course, the duration aspect, is different 
under the influence of a purpose from that in the case of a passive 
awareness of the object. If then these differences between active 
and passive attention exist, then must we not admit that even 
here in this case of observation of the behavior off an "attribute" 
of sensation, the content is influenced by the presence of the 
psychological purpose to "inspect" the process? The perceptual 
pulse is no longer that of the coming back in rhythmic flow of a 
sensory content dependent simply upon the conditions of the 
stimulation of the nervous elements at the periphery, — but it 
becomes complicated by those factors that distinguish the course 
of a process that manifests itself under the conditions of active 
attention, from that of passive awareness. It is the "process" 
character of conscious experience that is thereby changed. So 
long as the psychologist continues to cite duration as one of the 
"inseparable attributes" of his sensory element, he cannot main- 
tain that the purpose to observe it introduces no changes into the 
element. And in order to maintain that it is a "real" item in 
experience, he believes that he must make duration one of the 
"inseparable attributes", for, says Titchener, one cannot conceive 
of a sensation that has not some duration. If such an influence 
upon the temporal course in the attempt to inspect an "attribute" 
of sensation takes place, in so far as we regard it as a real 
occurrence we must conclude that the presence of the psy- 
chological purpose modifies, here, as elsewhere, the on-going 
consciousness. 

But to conclude; as against Titchener our analysis has led us 
to note that no actual conscious process can be "inspected" with- 
out making the purpose to inspect and the judgment resulting 
therefrom a part of the activity — and when thus injected into 
the activity it is side-tracked from its course and the end whither 



64 CARL RAHN 

it had been tending. The purpose to introspect, in the sense of 
"inspect", does verily modify the ongoing process. 

As against Stumpf, we conclude that in so far as the concept 
of phenomena does not possess as a necessary Merkmal their 
being in consciousness they cannot be said to "stand over against 
us". In so far as they are conceived to become at times "con- 
tents" of consciouness, they cannot be said to stand over against 
us with all the likenesses and differences that might possibly be 
noted but go unnoted. They cannot be said to present more 
meaningful aspects than are actually discriminated. The con- 
scious experience of a sensory character that occurs in an 
intensity discrimination cannot be said to be the same as when a 
qualitative discrimination is made in response to the same inducing 
stimulation. In the realm of experience as sensory, as in all other 
realms, enrichment in meaning comes through the discriminative 
reaction of consciousness. And this is the point of James' con- 
tention when he maintains that in no sense can the product of 
analysis, as a conscious somewhat, be said to be already contained 
in an earlier experience in which no analysis occurred. The 
physical stimulation as a physical process may be the same, the 
conduction path to the cortex might possibly be the same, but 
this is a very different matter from the statement that the 
conscious experience arising in response to this stimulation is the 
same. The lights of the city street of Stumpf's illustration, in 
so far as we become aware of them as phenomenal content, cannot 
be said to be the "same" under the two conditions of analytic and 
of marginal attention. In so far as they were marginally noted 
as merely so many bits of brightnesses in the field of night, they 
cannot be said to have been phenomenally the same as when 
under conditions of analytic attention they are noted to 
differ in hue, some being the yellow of gas lamps, others 
the blue of electrics. And we are here remaining entirely 
within the bounds of Stumpf's own sytem, for we are in no 
wise referring to differences in the "feel" of Funktion, in the 
two cases, but are restricting ourselves entirely to the phenomenal 
aspects of the lights. 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 65 

XXII 

The psychologist cannot unqualifiedly assert that it is possible 
to observe conscious processes from a psychological point of view- 
without thereby interfering with the normal process. To assert 
that this is possible is to blink the fact of the influence of the 
central factor, call it whate'er you will, active attention, purpose, 
Einstellung, determining tendency, or what not. It is rather for 
psychology to recognize that it is at this very point that it can 
put in its "licks" in contributing its share to the control of our 
"inner" world, in the same way as the physical sciences have 
given us control over the world of things. To realize that the 
psychological purpose is but one of many possible determining 
tendencies that might be set into operation in determining the 
"what" of the "that" in consciousness,* is the beginning of 
psychological wisdom. The "that," the "object," falls into parts 
ihat are already habitual ways of conscious reaction. If these 
fail us, the "that," the stimulus, calls out other, analytic reactions ; 
it is now scrutinized in the light of the way it affects the sense 
organs, for we must know "what" the "that" that baffles us, 
"really" is. Hence the sensory analysis. The meanings that 
come to us in terms of this analysis are the beginnings of the 
reconstruction of the object, to use a well known functional 
phrase, — the object that came to consciousness meaning a baffling 
"that," in the reconstruction under the influence of past experience 
becomes a "what," and whatever else it might mean besides, now 
means at least this much : these, and these, and these, "sensations." 
It is just because the earlier conscious reactions to the "that" 
were inadequate, that the analytic reaction is called out, and this 
is the point at which James's contention might be recalled that 
the analysis into these and these sensations is anything but 
"contained" in the earlier reaction to the stimulus. Once the 
psychologist begins to realize that there is such a thing as psycho- 
logical analysis and observation going on in the normal business 

* Compare Biihler's distinction between Intention and Wasbestimmtheit, 
i.e., between "thatnes's" and "whatness"; also Woodworth's distinction twixt 
sensory qualities and "thinghood." See below, section XXXI. 



66 CARL RAHN 

of life, he will set about studying the rise of psychological 
distinctions as a part of the process of adaptation, he will seek 
to note just how "observations" of conscious activities changes 
them, and thus he will get his point of application in the control of 
mental process. The natural scientist does not merely describe, 
he seeks to control. The chemist does not merely want to know 
about chemical elements, he wants to be able to make them do his 
will, and as a result we have the impressment of chemistry into 
the service of human ends, just as the physicist's mastery of mat- 
ter gives to humanity the control of the world in terms of 
physics. So, too, biology is attempting to develop eugenics as a 
science. In like manner psychology can render its quota to the 
control factors in human life by showing up the mechanicism by 
which changes are introduced into the course, the flow, of con- 
sciousness. To note that the psychologist can introduce changes 
in consciousness, can "interfere" with it, is the fact to be 
"pounced upon", and studied. He should ask how are these 
changes brought about. A body of knowledge of how to intro- 
duce these changes is the beginning of a new era in human culture. 
We instanced above the rise of the habit of dissociating the 
sensory stimulation from its meaning, the habitual conscious 
reaction from its stimulus. We noted that the modern mystics 
are making this the central feature of their method. Now an 
adequate account of this method, of this psychological process 
of dissociation for the purpose of allowing new associations to 
rise, would give us an element of control in our psychic life that 
would be of value not merely for mysticism, but more broadly for 
science and the affairs of common life. It would give us the tool 
by means of which men might literally limber up their minds. . . 
It is such a body of knowledge, also, that a truly scientific psycho- 
therapy must make its point of departure. 

We note then that our provisional criterion that we sought to 
apply to the types of experience designated by various categories 
in our psychological system, for purposes of classification, fails 
us. We cannot classify on the basis of conscious states that 
suffer and those that do not suffer immediate "inspection". We 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 67 

saw that the injection of the psychological purpose into a normal 
activity inevitably interferes with the on-going process, i.e., 
differentiates it from an otherwise similar process into the course 
of which no such psychological purpose is introduced. This 
means, then, that the "taking of mental notes while the observa- 
tion is in progress, without interfering with consciousness", is 
impossible. It means further that Stumpf's characterization of 
the "phenomena" that "stand over against us as somewhat 
objective, that seeks merely to be described and acknowledged", 
does not apply to anything in the way of actual consciousness 
that we have been able to discover. 



XXIII 

We now come to the question : How have we come by the 
category of a static mental "element," a somewhat "that stands 
over against us ?" 

There is an ancient philosophic distinction between "sense" 
and the "understanding". The senses were supposed to furnish the 
raw material which the understanding works over into ideas, and 
these in turn into the concepts that constitute our mental furni- 
ture. And what is more, we find that there are some among us 
who believe that this working up is not merely inferred when we 
find the furniture there in consciousness,' — no, we may also 
become aware of the very process itself, we can hear the whirring 
and buzzing of the manufacturing, as it were. The raw material 
that comes in, is conditionel in large measure by the constitution 
of the sense organs and by the manner in which they are affected 
by the things of the outer world. But whatever the metaphysical 
conception of the status of the in-coming material may be, it is 
supposed to possess a certain fixity of inner constitution. It is the 
phenomenal reflex into consciousness at the point where the 
the individual comes in contact with the "world" in which he 
lives. It is not the "world" itself that comes in, nor a duplicate 
copy of it, but that which comes in is an "appearance", phenom- 



68 CARL RAHN 

enon. Over against this phenomenal content is the understanding, . 
Spinoza and Descarte's distinction twixt extension and thinking 
recurs in Stumpf's categories of phenomena and Funktionen, for 
"das uns gegebene Tatsachenmaterial zeigt eben schon in der 
Wurzel ein Doppelantlitz". 55 The philosophic ancestry of the 
distinction throws some light on certain features of contempor- 
ary conceptions. 

The modern sensation is in part a descendant of one side of this 
duality. We shall not here trace the line of descent,* but would 
point out that it is discernible, for instance, in the statement of the 
sensation as the sum of all its attributes. To it still adheres much 
of that relatively fixed character that belongs to the phenomena 
over against the more labile thought ingredient of consciousness. 
And in Stumpf 's making the fact of being in consciousness not a 
necessary Merkmal of the phenomena we see a logically consistent 
carrying-out of the distinction. The phenomena need not neces- 
sarily be in consciousness in order to constitute them phenomena. 
The understanding, in the case of Stumpf's system, one of the 
psychic Funktionen, notes elements here and others there, i.e., 
focuses upon them. The phenomena are there, waiting to be 
acknowledged and described. Hence the doctrine of the possi- 
bility of unconscious phenomenal contents. 66 The fact of being 
noted, the fact of coming to the focus, in a word, the fact of 
clearness, is not, in such a system, an attribute of the phenomena, 
but of the process of apprehension. The phenomena may remain 
the same when apprehended marginally as when attended to 
focally. Relations and likenesses and differences exist between 
the phenomena that may or may not be apprehended in the opera- 
tion of the psychic Funktionen. 56 Phenomena and Funktionen 
are independently variable. The peppermint experience before 
analysis and the peppermint-analyzed-into-its-elements have the 
same phenomenal content — what has changed is the Funktion. 
On the other hand, the Funktion may remain constant whilst the 
phenomenal content changes, as when, lost in thought, at the 
twilight hour, I am still aware of my surroundings through the 

* See below, Section XXXIV. 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 69 

visual impressions coming in. I give them, presumably, an un- 
changing degree of marginal attention, i.e., the Funktion remains 
constant, so, too, the meaning that accrues to the phenomenal 
content ; but the phenomenal content that is apprehended is chang- 
ing without my becoming aware of the change. 66 These are 
examples illustrative of the thesis that phenomena and Funktionen 
are independently variable. What remains the same and 
unaffected by these phenomenal differences is the Funktion, in 
Titchener's terms the "attitude" that we have assumed in 
response to the stimulation arising from the objects gradually 
changing under the influence of twilight illumination. It is 
assumed that certain conscious phenomenal elements are likewise 
changing, but the "clearness" of apprehension with reference to 
them, and the manner in which they are apprehended (the "pat- 
tern" into which they would have to fall as a result of the activity 
of the Funktion des Zusammenfassens) may remain constant. 
Such a characterization is possible only in a system in which 
sensory phenomena with all their "attributes" may exist in con- 
sciousness without being meaningful. Just bare attributive 
changes are here supposed to have been going on, presumably 
within consciousness, and yet called out no meaningful reactions. 
In the phenomena relations of likeness, of difference, etc., may 
exist without being noted. There are even unnoticeable differ- 
ences; 66 and nothing would appear to stand in our way if we 
would posit, say, sensations that remain below the threshold. 
Furthermore, "the fine distinctions in the content of the sensa- 
tions that are ours are not always directly present to us. We must 
differentiate once more between phenomenon and thing-in-itself 
within the realm of the phenomena themselves." 67 

So much for this conception of sensory phenomena as over 
against the understanding. The world of phenomena is not the 
world of physics, nor yet is its existence dependent upon the 
presence of the phenomena in consciousness. We study the 
phenomena under conditions of focalized attention, but the attri- 
butes that we discern in them and the relations existing between 
them are in no sense dependent upon consciousness for their 



70 CARL RAHN 

existence. Stumpf would make the science of phenomenology 
a discipline of its own. 69a Phenomena are the starting point for 
both physical and psychological science, but only the starting 
point, for the real matter of the sciences lies to either side of 
the phenomena. The real business of psychology is the study 
of operations of the Funktionen, and he carries out his con- 
ception consistently within the limits of his system. At one point 
an interesting question might arise: Are we to conceive the 
transition from focally apprehended sensations over into marginal 
and subliminal sensations as a gradual decrease in clearness of 
apprehension merely? And if so, would the hypothetical sensa- 
tions below the threshold have at least physiological representa- 
tion, — specifically in the same parts of the nervous system as 
the sensations that have conscious existence, i.e., in the cortex? 
If subconscious phenomenal representation be denied to stimula- 
tion that functions in releasing subcortical reflexes, the distinction 
would appear a trifle arbitrary, for it would rest on purely physio- 
logical grounds, i.e., the distinction between unconscious cortical 
paths and subcortical paths. If, on the other hand, the distinction 
be not drawn somewhere, then all stimulation of the physiological 
organism might claim sub-liminal representation in the phenom- 
enal nether-world of the psyche. Thus it would not be an illegiti- 
mate interpretation of Stumpf s illustration to affirm that the 
stimulation arising from the presence of the lights of the city 
streets functioned a large part of the time in releasing purely un- 
conscious reactions resulting in my keeping to the path as part of 
the total adaptive process in an accustomed environment. On 
the first supposition viz., that only cortical stimulation is to have 
phenomenal representation, whether conscious or unconscious, 
the lights would at times, under a focal and marginal apprehen- 
sion, have conscious phenomenal representation, — at times merely 
sub-liminal representation, in so far as the reactions resulted in 
the form of unconscious cortical reflexes, and at other times no 
phenomenal representation at all, whenever the cortical reflex 
should become short-circuited by way of a thalamic or even some 
lower correlation center. Yet this is not the interpretation that 






SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 71 

Stumpf would seem to make in his illustration, for he says: 
"Surely, we must say to ourselves that just a moment ago there 
also were light and sound impressions of the same sort and in 
the same spatial and temporal relations as we now perceive them," 
i.e., under conditions of focalized attention. The reaction of 
"just a moment ago" may have come under any one of the three 
neurological possibilities just mentioned, including the case 
where the stimulation does not release a cortical but a sub-cortical, 
let us say, a thalamic, reflex. If we are right in this, then stimu- 
lation functioning in releasing not cortical but sub-cortical reac- 
tions also might claim sub-liminal phenomenal representation. 
But the moment we take this position it means that we must allot 
to all stimulation of the physiological organism, of whatever 
sort, whether from within or without, phenomenal representation. 
We would thus obtain a wealth of phenomenal content; but 
whether any rational need justifies us in affirming that the unap- 
prehended sensory materials that by hypothesis are to be assumed 
as the unconscious phenomenal representation of stimulation that 
functions in releasing automatized sub-cortical reflexes, — whether 
we are justified in affirming that such hypothetical sensations are 
"the same" as the sensations of conscious experience, is open to 
grave doubt. . . 

The phenomena, then, do not exist in consciousness as rela- 
tively stable "thats" that may be inspected. In so far as they do 
come to consciousness in the concrete experience they are inex- 
tricably bound up with the Funktion of apprehension, awareness, 
or what not, and it is only by logical abstraction that, in the first 
place, phenomena and the apprehending Funktion may be 
differentiated, and, in the second place that the phenomenon, 
say a specific senory experience, can be characterized as a some- 
what that stands over against us that asks merely to be described 
and acknowledged. Such a characterization of the phenomena is 
a result of logical abstraction and it is in no sense true of the 
actual conscious experience. 

Such being the philosophic antecedents from which springs 
the present day conception of "sensation", the descendant of that 



72 CARL RAHN 

which is "apprehended" by the "understanding", — it is small 
wonder that we get into difficulties when we try to "attribute" 
to the sensation some of the characteristics, properties, or what 
not, that in that ancient distinction had come to be assigned to 
the other side of the division, as when, for example, we try to 
make the fact of clearness, the way in which the "understanding" 
apprehends the "phenomena", an attribute of the phenomena 
themselves. With the reaction against the "faculty" psychology 
came the desire to state consciousness in purely phenomenal 
terms, — to state it "as it is, existentially". The sensations of our 
day are the phenomena of the ancient distinction, reconstructed 
to suit an attempt at a purely structural statement of conscious- 
ness. They seek to cease being the rigid entities that they once 
had been while still a part of the dual system, and take upon 
themselves some of the characteristics that in those older systems 
and in the contemporary systems of Stumpf and others are 
attributes of the Funktionen. Yet when we are mindful of the 
origin of the abstraction we can somewhat more readily appre- 
ciate the difficulties into which we are thus led. Taking up 
into our definition of sensation the statement that sensations 
never mean — a function that in the dual system had been ab- 
stracted from the conscious experience and attributed to the 
understanding, — and having taken over this Merkmal of being 
meaningless, and at the same time eliminating from our psycho- 
logical system that which erstwhile performed this function, we 
find that our method of procedure works havoc within our psycho- 
logical conceptions themselves. We call the sensation a "process", 
hoping thereby to emphasize the fact of change and to eliminate 
the rigidity of the "phenomena". Yet logically we defined a 
sensation as the sum of all its attributes, and so long as we retain 
such a definition, a change in any of these attributes makes the 
sensation ipso facto another sensation, so that we do not get a 
sensation that is a process, but a series of sensations that might, 
perhaps, constitute a process. But it can hardly be said to consti- 
tute that so long as we retain the definition, given above, and 
the postulate of sensations as meaningless ; 80 for by the definition 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 73 

each group of "attributes" constitutes an element in itself, and 
the postulate prevents the consolidation of these into a "process", 
for to do that would be to establish relation between the various 
parts of the series, and the introduction of relation would consti- 
tute meaning. For the various parts, or elements, of the series 
would be each other's context; and context is that which consti- 
tutes meaning; 80 hence a process in which changes occur would 
necessarily be itself a meaning. We have already noted how the 
attempt to make the fact of clearness an attribute of sensation, 
leads to other logical incongruities. . . Thus we see that the 
attempt to give an intelligible account of consciousness in terms of 
the "phenomena" that, however we may seek to alter the concep- 
tion, betray all along the line their one-sided origin in that 
earlier abstract distinction between "sense" and "understanding", 
- — that such an attempt leads us into hopeless confusion. In its 
continual insistence that it is a "process" and not a static some- 
what, the modern sensation reminds us of the words of the Queen 
in Hamlet: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." 

On the other hand, the abstraction of the "process" character, 
of the "active powers", from the "phenomena", leads in other 
systems to a hypostatization that is equally illegitimate or equally 
legitimate, as one chooses. Here very soon "act" and the 
meaning that accrues to a situation by virtue of the act (for the 
"phenomena" are without meaning), came to be differentiated, 
and as a result we have not merely Funktionen over against 
phenomena, but also the meanings that are the "correlates" of the 
Funktionen. These correlates are the Gebilde in Stumpf's sys- 
tem. 64 In other systems there are analogous concepts, such as 
For men, Gestaltsqualitaten, etc. In Stump f they are not con- 
ceived of as quite so independent of the Funktionen as are the 
phenomena, but when we turn to Biihler's discussion of Stumpf's 
system, we find that the conception of the Gebilde has already 
come to partake more of a content character and is subsumed by 
Buhler under the category of gedankliche lnhalte, thought con- 
tents, as over against the Empfindungen and Vorstellungen that 
constitute the sinnliche lnhalte, sensory contents. 22 And differen- 



74 CARL RAHN 

tiation once started, there is no end of new categories : Bewusst- 
seinslagen, Regelbewusstein, attitudes, Bewusstheiten, — to name 
but a few. In how far these are Funktionen that are in conscious- 
ness, yet are chary of being called Inhalte, contents, but never- 
theless exhibit some leaning in that direction, — there is little 
unanimity. This chariness on the part of the Funktion to be 
classed with the Inhalte and its protestation that it is neverthe- 
less "immediately given" is sufficient earnest to us that it is the 
counterpart of the activity phase, of the process character, ab- 
stracted from the totality of conscious occurrence. The mani- 
fold of new categaries is truly staggering, — and all protesting 
vehemently that they are "non-senory" or "imageless" or "pure" 
thought or activity. Scant courtesy is paid the Sensation by those 
who have transferred their allegiance to the new god, and surely 
we must take off our hats to the few trusty fighters still defend- 
ing the altar of the venerable Concept of Sensation, that since 
Locke and Hume, has been regarded as the liberator of mankind, 
as the beacon of empirical science, as the "ultimate" of human 
experience. 



XXIV 

Yet in the minds of some the question may arise whether any- 
thing is gained by the invocation of new categories to be 
characterized largely in negative terms as "non-sensory," so long 
as we are in a state of doubt as to the positive content of the 
concept : sensory. It is only when we have a more or less definite 
meaning to attach to "sensory" that we can be sure of what the 
newly introduced "elements" or other categories are not. In 
other words, we would begin a definition of the problem by a 
re-examination of the relation of the concept : sensation, to these 
other "non-sensory" categories as it comes out in a comparison of 
several recent writers on the subject. 

We have noted that in the actual experience of everyday life 
not all aspects of "sensations" are of equal importance, sometimes 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 75 

it is the qualitative aspect, sometimes the intensity character, that 
looms large; and we further pointed out that the determining 
factor lay in the situation as a whole. In each specific case it 
might be a function of instinct, habit, or of purpose. In the words 
of Angell, "we shall always find that this sensation is determined 
by the demands made upon the organism by the environmental 
situation, i.e., that it is functionally determined and that it will 
vary with each specific situation with which the organism will have 
to cope. ... It is never a mere sensation in general. It is always 
this specific sensation produced by certain particular, momentary 
organic conditions." 5 Even though the stimulus be the same, the 
actual conscious character of the sensory aspect of experience 
that arises in response to the stimulus will vary from time to time 
as the situation or the purpose varies. "One may of course 
hypostatize this sensation and, dissociating it from its particular 
surroundings, regard it as a type of a relatively static structural 
element, for which specific function is a secondary and unimpor- 
tant consideration. But the actual sensory experience which 
constitutes the prototype of this hypostatized sensation, is not only 
capable of being viewed as an expression of functional activities, 
it cannot be correctly viewed or accurately described in any other 
way." 

A number of writers dwell upon this point that the actual 
conscious character of the sensory experience is dependent on 
the functional activity that is going on at the time being, and 
that it is not a fixed, staring, stable, static, immutable somewhat. 
Yet most of them are chary of departing from the venerable 
dogma concerning the "inseparability of the attributes" ; instance 
recently: Watt, in The British Journal of Psychology, Volume 
IV., Part 2, on The Elements of Experience and their Integra- 
tion; or Modalism, and Aveling, in the same volume, on Relation 
of Thought-Process and percept. Both emphasize especially the 
variability in the relative functional importance of the several 
attributes. That the various "aspects" may vary from time to 
to time in attentional clearness even Titchener teaches. And 
Meumann, likewise, writes as follows : "Beachten wir die Inten- 



76 CARL RAHN 

sitaten, so treten die Qualitaten, die raumlichen und zeitlichen 
Verhaltnisse fur unser Bewusstsein zuriick, beachten wir raum- 
liche Verhaltnisse, so gilt dasselbe von den Qualitaten, Intensitaten 
und Zeiten. Beachten wir die Zeitverhaltnisse, so treten alle 
qualitativen, intensitiven, raumlichen Theilinhalte aus dem 
Blickpunkt des Bewusstseins ; beachte ich Muskelpannungen ihrer 
Intensitat oder Qualitat nach, so verschwinden relativ fiir mich 
ihre zeitlichen Verhaltnisse." 40 

But when we turn to Kiilpe, we find that he comes very close 
to cutting the Gordian knot in affirming the separability of the 
attributes for "actual consciousness", even though they continue 
inseparable in some strange nether-world of "psychic reality". 

In connection with an account of certain experiments on 
abstraction, Kiilpe notes this fact of difference in the sensory 
aspect of experience in so far as it is a function of the dominating 
purpose of the moment. 34 In these experiments groups of 
symbols were presented, the elements of which differed among 
themselves in form, in color, and in arrangement. Instructions 
were to focus now upon the number of elements in the group, 
now upon their arrangement, now upon their form, now upon 
the colors. Concerning the different ways in which the content 
was in consciousness under the influence of the various types of 
instruction or purpose, he says : "Fiir die Erklarung ist zunachst 
wesentlich, ob die gefundenen Unterschiede . . . auf Unter- 
schiede der Gesichtsempfindungen order der appercipierenden 
Faktoren zuriick zu fiihren seien. Werden Z. B. die Element e 
oder die Farben anders gesehen, wenn entsprechende und wertn 
heterogene Aufgaben vorliegen, oder werden sie anders aufge- 
fasst, ohne dass die Gesichtsempfindungen selbst in beiden Fallen 
einen erheblichen oder wesentlichen Unterschied darboten? 
Darauf kann, wie ich meine, nach unserem Protokoll und der 
ganzen Versuchsanordnung nur gesagt werden, dass der Unter- 
schied lediglich oder doch wenigstens der Hauptsache nach in der 
Auffassung, nicht aber in den Empfindungen liegen kann. Mag 
ferner in manchen Fallen ein rasches Vergessen stattgefunden 
und die Aussagen iiber die der Aufgabe nicht entsprechenden 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 77 

Teilinhalte beeintrachtigt haben, so ist doch zumeist, wie ich auf 
Grund des Protokolls feststellen kann, die Auffassung selbst 
unmittelbar eine andere gewesen fur entsprechende und fur 
heterogene Aufgaben . . . Die Farben erscheinen (in the case 
of "heterogene Aufgaben", i.e., in problems in which the question 
of color was irrelevant) tatsachlich nur als gleich oder verschie- 
den, als dunkel oder bleiben ohne Ortsbestimmung . . . Am 
starksten zeigt sich die apperzeptive Natur dieser Tatsachen darin, 
dass Aussagen uber Element e oder Farben uberhaupt, in jeder 
Richtung unterblieben. Die Versuchsperson ist z. B. im Stande 
eine Figur richtig zu beschreiben, ohne uber die Beschaffenheit 
der sie begrenzenden Objekte irgend etwas unmittelbar im Be- 
wusstsein erlebt zu haben." 

"Ich lege wert darauf zu konstatieren, dass in den Abstrak- 
tionstatsachen unmittelbare Bewusstseinsphanomene vorliegen. 
. . . Die Versuchspersonen glaubten tatsachlich die Eindriicke in 
der angegebenen Unbestimmtheit zu sehen, bezw. tatsachlich 
keine Farbe, kein Objekt u. s. w. wahrgenommen zu haben. Da 
nun die Psychologie als Wissenschaft den Empfindungen regel- 
massig bestimmte Eigenschaften beilegt, sie aus bestimmten 
Teilinhalten bestehen lasst, so geht daraus hervor, das sie 
zwischen den psychischen Vorgangen und dem Bewusstsein von 
ihnen unterscheidet." 

"Dass dieser Unterschied gemacht werden muss, etwa in 
demselben Sinne, wie man zwischen physischen Vorgangen und 
dem Bewusstsein von ihnen unterscheidet, dass mit anderen 
Worten die alte Lehre von einem inneren Sinn mit der dazu 
gehorigen Gegeniiberstellung von Bewusstseinwirklichkeit und 
Realitat fur das Gebiet der Psychologie eine zeitgemasse Erneuer- 
ung finden muss — das ist das prinzipielle Ergebnis, das ich meinen 
Versuchen entnehmen mochte. In Anschluss daran defmiere ich 
die Abstraktion als den Prozess, durch den das logisch oder 
psychologisch Wirksame von dem logisch oder psychologisch 
Unwirksamen geschieben wird. Die wirksamen Teilinhalte sind 
fur unser Denken und Vorstellen die positive abstrahierten, die 
unwirksamen aber diejenigen, von denen abstrahiert worden ist. 



78 CARL RAHN 

Fur unser Bewusstsein giebt es demnach abstrakte Vorstellungen, 
fiir die psychische Realitat giebt es nur konkrete Vorstellungen." 
We have quoted the section at length because we believe that 
it contains much that will elucidate the relation between "sensa- 
tion elements" and the "non-sensory components" of perception 
and thought, and also much that will bear on the problem of con- 
tent and function. Let us note first that when the sensory quale 
is irrelevant to the problem, the subject believes tats'dchlich to 
have seen no color, or else the various colors appeared merely as 
being alike or different (ah gleich oder verschieden) , or else have 
merely a certain brightness value. In other words, Kiilpe believes 
that after all allowance has been made for possible errors due 
to memory, there is a very actual abstraction from visual quality 
in the conscious response to a stimulus under the influence of the 
Aufgabe in which the purpose is, say the determination of the 
character or of the arrangement of the elements or units in the 
presentation. The quality actually does not enter consciousness, 
yet there may be some awareness of brightness or of sameness 
or of difference. The subject may be able to "describe accurately 
a figure or contour, without having had any immediate conscious 
experience of the attributes (Beschaffenheit) of the delimiting 
objects". We believe that we are justified in interpreting this as 
meaning that what comes to consciousness under these specific 
conditions created by the Aufgabe is something of the nature of 
Gestaltsqualitdt, and that, while none of the "attributes" of the 
delimiting and of the delimited fields came to consciousness, the 
awareness of some difference between the two became the basis 
for the apprehension of the quality of form ... In the conscious 
reaction, then, there is an abstraction from irrelevant aspects of 
sensory experience, that under other conditions, specifically under 
the influence of another Aufgabe, might have come to conscious- 
ness. Such abstraction would appear to be all of a piece with 
those cases of everyday experience in which the intensity of the 
stimulation appears to come to consciousness abstracted from the 
specific quality, as when a bright light is suddenly flashed before 
us on a dark night, — the case on which we dwelt some time ago. 






SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 79 

If this be true, then we believe that we are on the track of the dis- 
tinction that Kiilpe and others make between B ewusstseinwirkliclv- 
keit and psychische Realitat. He tells us that the differences in the 
content that are noted in the different reactions to the stimulus 
resulting from the change in purpose, are to be characterized not 
as differences in the sensations, but as differences in our appre- 
hension of them. For, "since psychology as a science regularly 
assigns to sensations certain attributes, allows them to be consti- 
tuted by certain part-contents, it follows that we must distinguish 
between psychic processes and our consciousness of them". The 
"psychic processes" in this case are the underlying sensory pro- 
cesses, and, we take it, these processes, as sensations that are 
"the sum of all their attributes", are to be postulated as "psychic 
realities" but not as "conscious actualities" in this series of per- 
ceptual experiences. We would not impute to Kiilpe a point 
of view that may be foreign to him, yet it may not be amiss to 
indicate here a point of contact that he would seem to have in 
common with functional psychology. He says, "I would define 
abstraction as the process by which the logically or psychologically 
efficacious (Wirksame) is separated out from that which is logic- 
ally or psychologically inefficacious (unwirksame) . The efficacious 
part-contents are for our thinking and ideating ( Vorstellen) those 
that have been positively abstracted, the inefficacious those that 
have been abstracted from. For our consciousness, therefore, 
there may exist abstract Vorstellungen, for psychic reality there 
can be only concrete Vorstellungen." Sensations and images as 
they come to consciousness are here referred to under their aspect 
of Wirksamkeit, efficacy. It is the function that they are serving 
that determines their conscious character. Those aspects ( Teilin- 
halte) come to consciousness that are germane to the solution of 
the problem. It is the Aufgabe that determines how the objective 
stimulation is going to be reacted to by consciousness. The 
inefficacious aspects are abstracted from ; they need not even come 
to consciousness marginally. 

Sensory experience would certainly appear to be regarded 
here from the point of view of function. A like significance 



8o CARL RAHN 

would seem to attach to the characterization of consciousness 
as actual, Bewusstseinwirklichkeit, as over against the psychic 
reality (psychische Realitat) that must be ascribed to the 
sensations as they are "in reality". The distinction could not 
have been clothed in these words haphazardly by Kiilpe and there- 
fore the choice of the word "actuality", Wirklichkeit, is significant 
on account of its functional import as over against the more 
static meaning of reality that is ascribed to the "merely" psychical. 
Here, then, we would at least seem to have common ground with 
the functionalist so far as we are dealing with "conscious 
actuality" and not with an abstract "psychic reality". For 
conscious actuality part-contents (Teilinhalte), i.e., "attributes" 
of sensory stimulation, may become abstracted under the influence 
of the demands of the moment, and constitute the "content" of 
thought and idea. Such content, then, would have its rise as a 
response to functional demands and Angell speaks to the point 
when he says that "it cannot be correctly viewed nor accurately 
described in any other way". It is merely a matter of termin- 
ology when Kiilpe calls the "part-content" thus functionally 
effective "abstract" ; in this sense all content of actual conscious- 
ness might be referred to as "abstract", but this would involve us 
in the larger question whether all consciousness is essentially 
selective and we still have to face the problem of the images 
that have the appearance of mere "by-play" and of "sparks 
struck off by thought in its progress". 100 Here let us dwell 
only upon the implication that form or arrangement sensory 
quale, intensity, quantity, may each be "abstracted", and become 
the effective content of actual consciousness. Sensory experience 
in actual consciousness, then, is not a mechanical sequence of 
sensations as they are described by "psychology as a science", 
but it is rather a looming up of now this aspect, now that, all in 
response to needs arising in the on-going activity 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 81 

XXV 

Kiilpe states that the differences in the varying perception of 
the presentative material, parallel with the variation in the 
Aafgabe, are not differences in the "sensations" (Empfindungen) 
but differences in the mode of apprehension (Auffassungsweise). 
We are here face to face once more with the dual system with 
its distinction of sense and understanding. The "inner sense" 
selects, apprehends in some mysterious manner, the "psychic 
processes" of sensation, and it is only so that they are lifted from 
the plane of mere "psychic reality" to the level of "conscious 
actuality". 35 With such a dialectic, to affirm that the "sensa- 
tions" remain the same, Kiilpe can mean only that the stimula- 
tion is the same, and such a statement contains no reference what- 
ever to characteristics of sensations as "contents" of consciousness. 
The sensation has "psychic reality" ascribed to it; yet it would 
save a world of misunderstanding if we would treat it frankly 
as a physiological category. And yet Kiilpe speaks of the concrete 
Vorstellungen of psychic reality as over against the abstract 
Vorstellungen of actual consciousness. We would ask: Is it 
possible for us to experience the concrete Vorstellung, or not? 
It appears almost futile to discuss this point until we are given 
further information concerning the character of psychic reality, 
but it is necessary to appreciate the difficulty, at least, before we 
can go on to a discussion of "imageless contents". The hypo- 
thetical psychically real sensory processes that are manipulated 
in sundry "acts" of consciousness, are evidently regarded in some 
sense as "given", before they are apprehended by consciousness. 
Then under the influence of the purpose there is in the process of 
apprehension abstraction from irrelevant psychic reality. The 
relevant comes to actual consciousness as the functionally effective 
content. But nevertheless a part of the constitution of the 
Vorstellung is conceived as being peculiar to itself and not attri- 
butable to the action of the apprehending act. Intensity and 
sensory quality belong to the "sensation" in psychic reality, even 
though either of these aspects may be abstracted from by actual 
consciousness. For purposes of statement within a psychological 



82 CARL RAHN 

system this statement of psychic realities that are apprehended by 
an act of consciousness might have some justification, but unless 
carefully qualified the impression might arise that somehow there 
are certain "sensations" coming to consciousness and that "parts" 
of these, Teilinhalte, are then apperceived in an "act" subsequent 
to their appearance. The ascription of "psychic reality" to these 
hypothetical sensations and their attributes prior to their appear- 
ance in consciousness tends to increase the probabilities for the 
operation of this source of error. One thing to note is this : What- 
ever the constitution of the hypothetical sensations of merely 
psychical reality, the sensory experience of actual consciousness 
is not to be conceived as their copy. We must recall always that 
these hypothetical sensations are logical constructs and that they 
are in no sense brute "givens", but are the postulates of "psy- 
chology as a science". Sensory consciousness may be varied, yet 
the "sensations" remain the same, so long as the objective stimu- 
lation and the conditions under which it operates, remain con- 
stant. "Sensation" and "consciousness of sensation" are two 
categories that must be carefully kept apart, and it is here that 
we must locate much of the cause of misunderstanding in the 
non-sensory imageless thought controversy. 

We note then that the category of sensation for certain 
psychologists is not a category of consciousness at all. Actual 
consciousness for such psychologists as Stumpf and Kiilpe is 
conceived as being essentially functional. "Sensation" is sub- 
sumed under the category of phenomena, into the conception of 
which the characteristic of "conscious" does not enter as an 
essential Merkmal, or else Empfindung is characterized as a 
"process" of "psychic reality", which, undefined as it is, has the 
negative differentia, at least, of being put over against "conscious 
actuality". While there may be eminently good reasons for 
doing this, it would save much misunderstanding to make it 
frankly a physiological category; then it would be more easily 
detected when it got mixed up in explanations in which it 
masquerades as a conscious somewhat. 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 83 

XXVI 

To return now to "conscious actuality" and to the abstract 
Vorstellungen that are found there. We saw that this conscious 
actuality as a whole and the abstract Vorstellungen that appear 
in it as part contents were characterized by Kiilpe in terms indi- 
cative essentially of functional efficacy. It is in this consciousness 
that we gain that experience which, under the influence of a 
psychological purpose, we later systematize and as a part result 
may obtain the conception of a relative static structural element 
that we hypostatize as the "sensation" or the "image" of psy- 
chology. But in the meantime conscious actuality continues to 
do business with the "abstract" ( ?) shreds of sensory experience 
and does it in a wonderfully efficient manner. The psychologist, 
having finally laboriously constructed the "real sensation", 
comes back to conscious actuality and is dissatisfied with 
his "element." The element that he has constructed will 
never do for purposes of describing what goes on in this "con- 
scious actuality" (Bewusstseinwirklichkeit). Indeed, he becomes 
convinced that there is "something more" in consciousness that is 
nothing like the concrete Vorstellung of psychic reality, postulated 
by psychology as a science. So he thrusts aside his construct, the 
sensation and image of psychic reality, and proclaims that con- 
scious actuality is largely "imageless" and "non-sensory". For- 
sooth, the sensations and images seldom enter this consciousness, 
and when they do, they are "troublesome", they hinder rather 
than further thought. Indeed Woodworth notes that they par- 
take essentially of the nature of "by-play", that they "have more 
the appearance of sparks struck off by thought in its progress than 
thought itself". 102 26 Or again, Biihler concludes that "a look 
into our protocols suffices to say that anything that appears so 
fragmentarily, so sporadically, so occasionally, in consciousness 
as the Vorstellungen in the course of our thought experiences, 
cannot be regarded as the carrier of the closely-knit and continu- 
ous content of thought". 12 



84 CARL RAHN 

XXVII 

And what is it that our psychologist abstracts from experience 
as the new "element" to put over against the "sensation" ? 

We saw that color quality, according to Kulpe's results, may 
be abstracted from. "Die Versuchspersonen glaubten . . . 

tatsachlich keine Farbe wahrgenommen zu haben." The 

color qualities do not come to consciousness; "die Farben er- 
scheinen tatsachlich nur als gleich oder verschieden", or else their 
white values find representation, they appear merely as dunkel. 
But the factor that may come to consciousness in these cases is 
the figure i.e. the form or arrangement. We might conveniently 
refer to this as the form-quality and point out its kinship with the 
Gestaltsqualitdt of other writers. It is this form-quality that 
comes to consciousness here in Kulpe's experiments, as a result 
of the operation of a certain Aufgabe in response to certain sen- 
sory stimulations. The form is the "content" of consciousness; 
it is the abstract Vorstellung which can occur only in conscious 
actuality, but never in psychic reality, for psychic reality contains 
only concrete Vorstellungen. 

Now in all these cases of abstraction the differences noted do 
not lie, for Kulpe, in these Empfindungen. He says : "We must 
say that the differences can lie solely, or at least in the main, not 
in the Empfindungen but in the Auffassung (apprehension)." 
From the making of this distinction we can infer only this : that 
the Empfindungen in which no change occurs, although character- 
ized as psychic processes, are nothing other than the peripheral 
physiological stimulations of the sense organs. In physiological 
terms it means that very probably under the different modes of 
apprehension there is no difference in the activities of the end 
organs, perhaps also in the activity along the conduction paths 
up to the cortex, though this might turn out to be questionable 
even as an hypothesis. 110 But the Empfindungen as contributing 
nothing to these differences are not conscious Empfindungen. 
They have all the attributes that a structural psychology assigns 
them, but they are not in consciousness. Consciousness is a new 
function that supervenes. It is only then that the Empfindungen 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 85 

are precipitated into "conscious actuality". In this dialectic the 
fact of consciousness, then, is what is meant by the "inner sense". 
Here we have, once more, the phenomena of Stumpf, and the 
Funktionen of consciousness over against them. And now in 
conscious actuality, under the influence of some purpose, those 
part-contents of psychic reality are abstracted that are relevant to 
this purpose. And so it comes- to pass that the form-quality may 
under certain conditions come to consciousness abstracted from 
the other possible Teilinhalte. This is an abstract Vorstellung of 
consciousness as functional (Bewusstseinwirklichkeit) , — it is the 
part-content (Teilinhalt) that is functioning (wirksam) in the 
problematic situation. I am told to note the form and forthwith 
the "form quality" is apprehended and all things else are ab- 
stracted from, i.e. I perceive form or pattern of arrangement in 
the sensuous presentation. And for Kulpe this actual pattern 
consciousnes is a product of the process of abstraction ; it is not a 
function of the Empfindungen. 

For Stumpf this pattern consciousness would be a case of 
Gebilde, — we believe that we may interpret it as such. If so, the 
fact of falling into pattern would be characterized as Funktion, 
the pattern consciousness itself would be the Gebilde. We saw 
in the course of our earlier discussion that Stumpf held that the 
Gebilde was not given in the same sense as the phenomena and 
Funktion were given, but that the Gebilde was characterized as 
being the "correlate" of the Funktion. It is not a new phenomenal 
content. Now we saw that Buhler, in a review of Stumpf did a 
certain violence to Stumpf 's system by classing the Gebilde among 
the gedankliche Inhalte (thought content) as over against the 
sinnlichen Inhalten (sensory content). But once only does 
Stumpf refer to Funktion as content, and we are inclined to 
believe that that was a slip of the pen. 56 The logical ordering of 
the categories of his system is this : The immediately givens are 
(a) contents, viz. : phenomena and relations, and (b) the Funk- 
tionen. The forms, Gebilde, patterns, are not a third type of 
given, in the same sense as these other two, but are the "corre- 
lates" of the Funktionen. What is given need not necessarily be a 



86 CARL RAHN 

"content". For that is immediately given that "strikes one as im- 
mediate matter of fact". The fact of falling into a pattern may be, 
according to Stumpf , a fact in consciousness, but he would prob- 
ably have us make it a fact of the "how" of consciousness, not of 
the "what", of content. The correlate of this "how", the Gebilde, 
the pattern, is not, says Stumpf explicitly, a new phenomenal 
content. It is for this reason that we believe Buhler does violence 
to Stumpf's system in making the Gebilde a "thought content", 
in spite of the one instance that we mentioned in which Stumpf 
refers to the Funktionen as Inhalt, thus putting them on a level 
with the phenomena and the hypostatized sensations of psychic 
reality. 

It is the form quality, pattern quality, Gestaltsqualitat that 
comes to consciousness as abstract Vorstelhing in the abstraction 
tests, that Buhler and Woodworth hypostatize as another form of 
content. The form quality is referred to by Woodworth as per- 
cept quality and is the "meaning". 103 And this, as a static 
somewhat, robbed of its correlation with the Funktion in which it 
comes into being and abstracted from the total conscious actuality, 
this "meaning", this way in which objective stimulation is 
responded to by consciousness in the percept, is ranged alongside 
of "sensations", Empfiundungen, as another kind of "content" of 
consciousness. Thus Stumpf's distinction between phenomena 
and Funktion and Kiilpe's distinction between conscious actuality 
and psychic reality are overridden. 

We are now in a position to understand more adequately the 
difference between Stumpf and James upon which we dwelt some 
pages back: the case of the naive peppermint-experience as over 
against the experience analyzed into sensations, and the case of 
the actual lemonade-taste versus the lemonade-taste as being 
"composed" of sensations of sour and sensations of sweet. The 
way in which the unanalyzed experience "feels", James holds to 
be a "simple quality". Stumpf denies this; but the bone of con- 
tention is not the fact but the psychological naming of the fact. 
In Stumpf's system the "content" is the phenomenal qualities; 
in Kiilpe's it is the "processes" of psychic reality. But the 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 87 

consciousness of them as "lemonade" or as "peppermint", i.e. the 
"form" that they take on in actual consciousness, is the correlate 
of a Funktion. The Funktion is here the Funktion des Zusam- 
menjassens, i.e. the abstraction of the psychologist of the fact 
that under certain conditions a mass of stimulation is thus appre- 
hended as a unity, which under other conditions might appear as 
a manifold of sensations. The form is "das, was eine Melodic 
oder eine rdumliche Figur oder eine sonstige, als zusammen- 
hdngendes Ganges aufgefasste Vielheit von Erscheinungen unter- 
scheidet von einer Vielheit sonst gleicher und gleich angeordneter 
Frscheinungen, die aber vom Bewusstsein nicht zusammenge- 
fasst werden." 6 * The Funktion, of which the form is the corre- 
late, is the fact of the occurring, the fact of the cohering; its 
correlate in each specific case of conscious experience, for Stumpf, 
is the "form". We believe that logically this is the equivalent of 
the "percept-quality" of Woodworth, of the Gestaltsqualitdt of 
Ehrenfels. James' simple quality of perception, then, arises for 
Stumpf when consciousness reacts upon phenomena in a definite 
unified way. It has its rise in this reaction of consciousness. It 
is the correlate of the Funktion. Hence to take this reaction of 
consciousness and to hypostatize it as a new static element would 
be logically illegitimate for Stumpf within the limits of his 
system. The lemonade and the peppermint are in actual con- 
sciousness what they are experienced to be both for James and for 
Stumpf, and their difference is not a difference in data, but a 
difference in working them up into a system. What James 
affirms is that the sort of consciousness that occurs when I get 
an analyzed precipitant of "sensations", as they come to con- 
sciousness as the result of analysis, is in no sense the same as 
that of the naive unanalyzed conscious reaction. Stumpf's posi- 
tion might be restated in the form that the sensory stimulation 
that underlies the naive experience and the analytic reaction is 
the same. But only that. The reaction of consciousness, how- 
ever, and, we believe that Stumpf would have to admit, the whole 
wide-spread activity in the cortex that underlies this reaction, 
as over against the activity represented by the afferent path up 



88 CARL RAHN 

to the cortex that underlies the hypothetical phenomena, these are 
different in the two cases. 

This case of the lemonade taste, though seemingly so differ- 
ent, is in principle identical with the case of the abstract Vor- 
stellung of the form in Kiilpe's experiments and the conscious- 
ness of the meaning of the spoken words : "Kant's transcendental 
unity of apperception." All three are alike "sensory", in that 
their "conscious actuality" is conditioned by some form of periph- 
eral stimulation. To say that they are "non-sensory" is only to 
affirm that the hypothetical sensation of structural psychology, 
which is "the sum of all its attributes", that is abstractly bare 
sensation without meaning, does not enter into this conscious 
actuality. In this sense the three may be alike non-sensory. But 
whatever principle be applied for purposes of classification, all 
three must come under the same category. 



XXVIII 

We then ask: What is the criterion on the basis of which 
consciousness is to be characterized as "sensory" and "non- 
sensory" ? 

Buhler speaks definitely to the point in the case of sinnliche 
Vorstellung. It is one that can be described in terms of sensory 
quality and intensity, {was durch Angabe von sinnlicher Qnali- 
tat und Intensitdt beschrieben werden kann.) Now if the "form" 
of Kiilpe's abstraction tests be the type of the Gestaltsqualit'dt and 
of the percept-quality, then it cannot be a sinnliche Vorstellung, 
for it cannot be described directly in terms of visual sensory 
quality and intensity. "Nothing was immediately experienced 
consciously concerning the character of the delimiting objects," 
says Kiilpe. Hence no direct determination of the abstract Vor- 
stellung in sensory quality or intensity. The Vorstellung in ques- 
tion, therefore, is not "sinnlich" but " gedanklich" . That is to 
say, it is to be characterized as non-sensory on the score of the 
absence of the hypothetical abstract sensations of "psychology as 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 89 

a science", the bare sensation that is a content staring you in the 
face, as it were, whose "being" consists in its "attributes". 

Yet in the case of visual pattern or form, even if it be a case of 
abstract Vorstellung, in that there has been an abstraction from 
sensory quale and presumably from intensity, the question arises : 
Might not the precipitant in consciousness be characterized as a 
positive abstraction of the extensity attribute? It is not that we 
would make a plea for this particular type of procedure, for 
Kiilpe does not in his paper characterize explicitly this form 
quality as gedanklich. It is only when we come to Buhler that this 
occurs. And if the elimination of all the "attributes" is neces- 
sary before a conscious experience may be designated non-sensory, 
then we would ask: Why does Buhler leave extensity out of 
account ? We conclude, therefore, that the only attributes of his 
"sensory" experience are intensity and quality. 

We have as a result this curious situation: All meaningful 
consciousness that has as its core intensity or quality phases, easily 
distinguishable, is to be labelled "sensory". But all those experi- 
ences that are built upon extensity aspects, such as the pattern or 
form quality and those that are built upon the order-aspect. — 
what of these? Are they to be regarded as "non-sensory"? And 
what of the duration aspect of experience, as in the case of vari- 
ous types of rhythm ? We point this out only to show that a very 
fundamental question has still to be faced. If we continue to 
employ the category of sensation in any form; if arrangement 
and pattern be in any way referable to extensity and duration 
aspects of stimulation; and if it be true that in actual conscious- 
ness there is possible this abstraction of all these various phases, 
then, since extensity and duration are usually cited as "attri- 
butes" of sensation, it behooves us not to pass them over without 
mention. It may be, to be sure, that Buhler would still character- 
ize these as sensory as Kiilpe appears to do, viz. as abstract 
Vorstellnngen of conscious actuality. But then Buhler should 
have named these attributes among the criteria of the sensory. 
Else he will obtain a curious crossing within his categories, and 
he can hardly expect the uninitiated to keep them straight. But 



90 CARL RAHN 

having stated his criterion of the "sensory" in terms of the two 
aspects of quality and intensity, he thus makes possible the char- 
acterization of all meanings, whether perceptual or ideational, in 
which the important factor is order, either temporal or spatial, as 
"non-sensory". 



XXIX 

Having thus stated his criterion Buhler does not hesitate to 
characterize anything in the way of consciousness that might 
come anywhere near being describable in terms of sensory quality 
or intensity, as irrelevant. I refer to that aspect of perceptual 
and ideational experience which even in the absence of the pur- 
pose to introspect often comes to us in the form of kinaesthesis 
or kinaesthetic imagery. It is to this aspect of consciousness, 
we believe, that a curious quality of "humanness" is attributable 
that seems to belong to the conscious world of the possessors of 
this type of mental reaction, as over against the more "external" 
world of other types of mind. He says: "Man konnte ja audi 
versucht sein, jene sinnlichen Elemente, die wir kurz als raum- 
liches Richtungsbewusstsein oder Bewusstsein der Anderung 
dieser Richtungen bezeichnet haben, mit in die Fragestellung 
hineinzunehmen. Doch ist leicht zu sehen, dass die raumliche 
Orientierung, welche die Gedanken hier und da zu haben scheinen, 
etwas so Variables und auch verhaltnismassig Seltnenes ist, dass 
wir sie trotz des hohen Interesses, das ihr an sich zukommen 
mag, hier ruhig beiseite lassen konnen. Auch wenn mir bei 
einen Erlebnisfortschritt, den man durch die Worte 'aber' oder 
'oder' oder 'trotzdem' kundgeben wiirde, zumute ist, als ginge 
ich damit von etwas, was rechts vor mir stent, zu etwas, was sich 
links befindet, oder von etwas vor mir zu etwas hinter mir uber, 
so kann man diese Erfahrung doch nicht ernstlich zu dem Satz 
verallgemeinern wollen, das reale Bewusstseinscorrelat jener 
ideellen Kontinuitaten sei in solchen sinnlichen Elementen zu 
suchen. Dazu sind sie viel zu zufallig und wandelbar." 11 And 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 91 

this statement is not made in reference to our consciousness of 
percept quality, but in connection with a more general statement 
of the relation of this factor to his more elaborate "thoughts", 
where he is asking : "What are the essential constituents of our 
thought experiences, i.e., what are the carriers of the thought 
content : what is the psychically real correlate of the thought that 
is determined by logic?" 10 Now this kinaesthesis both in sensory 
form and as imagery that lies at bottom of this form of conscious- 
ness, comes perhaps as near as any to forcing itself home upon 
us in the course of normal consciousness, in the form of "mere 
sensation", not meaningless, to be sure, as the hypothetical sensa- 
tion and image ought to be according to the definition of struc- 
tural psychology, but nevertheless often loosed momentarily from 
the total perceptual or ideational consciousness in which it was 
apparently functioning, and flashes for a wee space as a dis- 
tinguishable percept, a kinaesthetic "sensation". Now, this comes, 
as close as anything to being a "sensation" in actual conscious- 
ness, a "sensation" which normally appears, if even there, only 
in introspective or analytic consciousness. It lies fully as close to 
the surface in some types of mind as does commonly the "sen- 
sation" of smell in the percept of the rose. Yet Buhler eliminates 
this aspect as "too fortuitous and changeful". 10 He concludes 
that the more immediately felt consciousness of seeming to go 
from something at my right to something at my left, etc., in 
connection with our awarenes of certain relational words, and 
which in many minds is given in terms of vivid kinaesthesis or 
kinaesthetic imagery, is to be abstracted from. In doing this he 
is inconsistent. His problem was ostensibly to discover the 
carriers of the Denkgehalt, "how the function of carrying this 
Denkgehalt is distributed between the Vorstellungen (Vorstell- 
itngen to be defined as above: sinnliche Vorstellungen) and the 
Gedanken, and how these two are related to one another." 10 
But he forthwith eliminates a great part of sensory experience 
that may have participated in the actual thought consciousness. 
At least he does away with the sensory aspect, yet in so far as 
even such sensory content has been in any way meaningful he 



92 CARL RAHN 

would divorce the meaning and make it a special sort of content, 
not of sensing or of imaging, but of "knowing" (eine Bedeutung 
kann man uberhaupt nicht vorstellen, sondern nur wissen). 21 
With this statement all common ground is swept from under us. 
The sensory or imaginal response of consciousness is conceived as 
a bare, meaningless, static what, so that even in those cases of 
awareness of pattern or form which might have been abstracted 
from the qualitative and intensive aspects of presentation in 
Kiilpe's tests, we would not have anything that as "sensory" is 
already meaningful, but something to which a new "element" 
must be added to make it meaningful. And yet, can it be that 
the pattern aspect referred to is conceived of as different from 
the Gestaltsqualitat which is mentioned by Biihler? In speaking 
of it he cites an example. "As I look upon the mass of lines of 
some complicated mathematical figure, at first blush I am at a 
loss what to do with it, but suddenly something 'lights up' with 
regards to them. What is it that has thus 'lighted up'? Evi- 
dently the meaning of the figure; and this meaning is always 
something gedankliches, in many cases nothing other than its 
law of construction." "A similar thing occurs when I suddenly 
comprehend the construction of a machine or the plan of a 
building." 15 

We believe, therefore, that experiences such as those of the 
abstraction tests of Ktilpe and Buhler's examples of Gestaltsquali- 
tat are essentially the same in kind. "Sensation" would appear 
to have but little function in Buhler's system ; sometimes it may be 
the 'substrate" of conscious experience; most often, however, it 
would appear to be quite irrelevant. 



XXX 

But what may be the relation of his Empfindung and Vor- 
stellung to his Gedankenf What Biihler characterizes as 
Gedanken are not the Bewusstseinslagen of Marbe, or the Funk- 
tionen of Stumpf, or the attitudes of Judd and of Titchener. 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 93 

No, while recognizing this category, Biihler insists that it is some- 
what quite other, viz. : the Bewusstheiten of Ach, which he, Biih- 
ler would rather term Gedanken. They are the gedankliche In- 
halte, thought content, as over against the sinnliche Inhalte, 
sensory content. We saw that he made his sensory content the 
counterpart of Stumpf 's phenomena, and his thought content the 
counterpart of Stumpf's Gebilde. And we already noted that in 
doing this latter he does a certain violence to Stumpf's system 
— for Stumpf definitely states that his Gebilde, "forms", were 
not to be considered as content, but as "correlates" of his 
Funktionen. 

Be that as it may, Biihler notes three types of Gedanken, ( I ) 
the Regelbewusstsein, 1 * consciousness of rule, of pattern, of 
construction, (2) Beziehungsbewusstsein, 11 consciousness of rela- 
tion, and (3) Intention, which we can best render, perhaps, by 
the term "objective reference". 18 Biihler's content categories 
might be tabulated thus : 

CONTENT 

a. b. 

Sinnlich Gedanklich 

1. Empfiundung (sensation) 1. Regelbewusstsein 

2. Vorstellung (image) 2. Beziehungsbewusstsein 

3. Intention 
But when we turn to the end of Biihler's section on Gedanken- 
typen, we come across another classification of content in terms 
of W asbestimmtheiten and Intentionen. Every content possesses 
a "what" and a "that", and his types therefore would appear now 
to have ceased to be independent elements and to have become 
"moments", aspects of thought. Every content must have a 
what and a that. 20 The what may be sensory or imaginal, or a 
Regelbewusstsein or a relational consciousness ; the that is always 
reference to an object, whether real or ideal. Aside from the 
consciousness of Funktion (Stumpf) or of attitude (Judd and 
Titchener), which Biihler would appear to subsume under the 
category of Bewusstseinslage, we would now have the following 
content categories : 



94 CARL RAHN 

a. Wasbestimmtheiten (whatness) 

i. Sensations and images 

2. Regelbewusstsein 

3. Consciousness of relation 

b. Intention (objective reference or thatness) 

We note then that the "sensation" and "image", when present, 
may function as one of the "whatnesses" of the thought. In 
this sense it is made co-ordinate with meaning and relational 
elements. Thus in the suddenly up-looming meaning of a plan or 
of a machine, that Buhler mentions, 15 or in the staircase figure of 
Woodwoirth, 100 we have such an instance. In so far as we are 
aware of the whiteness of the paper and the blackness of the 
lines we have "sensations" as Wasbestimmung, i.e. functioning in 
determining in part at least, the "what" of the "content". In 
so far as the whole has the meaning that suddenly looms up, the 
meaning of a particular plan, or in Woodworm's example, the 
the one or other staircase meaning, we would have Gedankliches, 
Gestaltsqualitdt or Regelbewusstsein, or with Wood worth : 
percept-quality. In so far as it was an object, a thing, a unified 
something, it would have in it for Woodworth, thing-quality, 104 
for Buhler, Intention, i. e. objective reference of some sort. 18 



XXXI 

It is this last "non-sensory" aspect of the experience of per- 
ceiving the plan, the staircase figure, or what not — that is of 
special interest to us. Here we are face to face with the problem 
of the thingliness of things of the philosophers, — the problem 
that Titchener would have us abstract from as non-psychological. 
Yet there are others who have the temerity to face it. The 
problem has been with us throughout the modern period of phi- 
losophy. In Locke it is brought in as the "idea of substance" 
which must be added to the sense impression to constitute the 
"thing". Yet how does he get it into his system, since as he says 
it is derived neither from sensation nor reflection? 36 And in 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 95 

Hume, 28 again, we have a resolute denial of aught but "quali- 
ties", yet somewhere there is slipped in unawares a "gentle 
force" that binds them together. Coming nearer home, we note 
how not only Biihler 19 posits objective reference as a non- 
sensory component of consciousness, but likewise Woodworth, 105 
attributing a non-sensory quality, "thing-quality", thinghood, or 
what not, to his perceptual experience, when he says: "The at- 
tempt to describe percept qualities as syntheses of sensory qualities 
is hypothetical in the second degree. The presence of the required 
images is hypothetical, and no less hypothetical is the power of 
the images, if present, by combining with the sensation to pro- 
duce a percept. They might fuse, no doubt ! But is the feeling- 
together of clanging noise and visual picture fully equivalent to 
the perception of a ringing car-bell? Were the two not felt as 
attributes of one thing, their mere simultaneous presence in con- 
sciousness would not give the percept which is actually experi- 
enced." The efficacy of the "gentle force" of Hume is doubted 
by Woodworth and is replaced by a special element of "thing- 
hood" that must knit together the visual and auditory elements 
of the experience into a unified whole. 

T. V. Moore 41 in his study on abstraction defines perception 
as "a process of assimilating the data of sense experience to their 
appropriate mental categories". It is these mental categories that 
are the counterpart of the non-sensory components of other 
writers. Among these categories we find that of "something". 
Theoretically this is believed by him to be the first category devel- 
oping in the individual mind and it "enters, though not con- 
sciously and explicitly, into all his (the child's) later concepts". 42 * 

Turning to another contemporary writer, Schultze, we have 
a procedure similar to that of Woodworth. He posits a non- 
sensory component: the Scheinsubstanz, pseudo-substance, which 
gives to the experience the object meaning. His illustration is 
fascinating: "While enjoying the spectacle of the play of in- 
numerable glow-worms in the north of Italy on a warm summer 
evening in the month of June, one often has the illusion of an 
unusually swift flying and fluttering on the part of the tiny 



96 CARL RAHN 

creatures. Now there is a glow here, now there . . . The illusion 
arises in that one notes the contemporaneous glowing of many 
worms at consecutive moments of time, but interprets it as the 
movement of one and the same creature . . . The illusion is 
conditioned — speaking psychologically' — in that several light sen- 
sations are unjustifiedly correlated with one and the same pseudo- 
substance." 46 Here we have a process of unification posited as a 
function of a non-sensory component as in the case of Wood- 
worth's example. But let us note : Schultze speaks in the follow- 
ing paragraph of this perceptual process as being explicable only 
by means of a conceptual process occurring without being noticed 
and immediately thereafter he says that "it is probable that thus 
also the processes of syntactic correlation will prove to be highly 
complex, but fully automatized, conceptual processes". 

In connection with these citations let us cite also a passage of 
Stumpf where he, too, appears to touch upon this problem. In a 
foot-note he defines his Funktion of awareness as that Funktion 
through which parts or relations are precipitated out of the chaos 
of phenomena. 57 Thereupon he says : "To be sure, there usually 
goes with it an instinctive positing of the part noted, and later 
there is often also a conceptual judgment concerning the presence 
of the part or of the relation." It is hardly fair to seek to inter- 
pret a position on so slight indications as may be found in a foot- 
note. Yet even a foot-note must mean something and indicate 
some direction of thought. We ask : What may be the signifi- 
cance of this "instinctive positing", instinktives Setzen, in this 
connection? Is it through this instinctive positing that the part- 
content, the phenomena noted, come to "stand over against us" ? 
If so, then is there not, even in the phenomena something of the 
nature of an instinctive Funktion tucked away? And what is to 
be the meaning that we are to attach to the term instinctive? If 
instinctive, then it is essentially innate, but innate what ? Is it an 
innate tendency to action ? — We see that we are here coming into 
close quarters with certain "genetic" considerations that Stumpf 
so decidedly deprecates; yet by postulating this instinctive act, 
which later may be replaced or accompanied by a conceptual 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 97 

judgment, he has certainly touched upon the problem of the rela- 
tion of instinctive activity to conscious activity, and thus comes 
well within the domain of the biological aspects of consciousness. 

We have then, here, five contemporary writers who touch upon 
the problem of objectivity, of the thingliness of things, Locke's 
problem of the idea of substance "which we neither have nor can 
have by sensation or reflection", yet concerning which he is con- 
strained to note that we "accustom ourselves to suppose some 
substratum wherein they (the simple ideas of sense) do subsist, 
from which they do result, which therefore we call substance". 39 
On the other hand we have Titchener who would deny that this 
is a problem for psychology at all. 95 

The function that is singled out by all these writers, however, 
is obvious enough. We awake from sleep in response to a sudden 
stimulus with a "what's that" ! The psychological problem is : 
How is the "that" given us ? Not in terms always of the "quali- 
ties" of the stimulus, for we may have in the situation a vivid 
"that-consciousness", these writers might say, long before the 
"whatness" of the "that" has been determined in the coming to 
consciousness of certain attributive aspects giving meaning to 
the stimulus. We "know" that "something was there", but it 
may take some time before the stimulation comes to consciousness 
in terms of certain sensory "attributes", or some other meaning. 
It is the "something" of Moore, the "pseudo-substance" of 
Schultze, the Intention of Buhler, the "thing" of Woodworth. 
All of these writers make the thatness a new structural category. 
But what would Stumpf do with our instance? Would the 
"instinctive positing" be precipitated into consciousness before 
the phenomena in terms of which the stimulus would be character- 
ized, have themselves loomed up? And would this precipitating 
of an instinctive activity into consciousness then partake essen- 
tially of the nature of a "conceptual judgment concerning the 
presence" of some stimulus? 57 And would it be essentially in 
situations like that of our illustration that the instinctive positing, 
the thatness, would come to consciousness? Questions such as 
these bring us within close range of the functional doctrine of 



98 CARL RAHN 

perception. The "thatness is a function of the co-operation of 
many organic conditions. This functioning factor might be a 
typical attitude of the organism, as in the instinctive attention 
response. The consciousness that arises in this situation then is 
that of attentive straining after a "that". 

Here lies the significance of such characterizations as that given 
by Colvin: "An object is, in the last analysis, constituted by a 
set of definite and consistent reactions." 24 "Thatness" in the 
case of the percept, would be referable to the influence of the 
"instinctive" innate reaction characteristic of responses to external 
stimulation. This factor in the total overt response becomes the 
basis for the attitude that contributes toward the awareness of 
the total situation as a reaction to an object present to sense. 

While one can readily appreciate the dislike that certain psy- 
chologists express for the indiscriminate intermingling of con- 
scious functions and motor functions, their legitimate desire 
to keep conceptual categories nicely apart should not lead 
them to overlook the fact that motor functions and conscious 
functions are closely interrelated. A stimulus that is making for 
expression in terms of one of several habits, insofar as it comes 
to consciousness at all, is experienced differently than when it 
calls out another habitual response. So, too, more narrowly, on 
the side of attitudes, the perceptual attitude may be felt as being 
distinctly different from the ideational. If then the thatness of 
the mental object be a function of the instinctive attitude with 
which the organism responds to the stimulation, it would appear 
that the standing over against us that, according to Stumpf, is 
manifested by the phenomena, is not a characteristic that is inher- 
ent in them, and that is, as it were, written across their face, 
but rather one that accrues to the sensory experience in the calling 
out of a certain attitude. The same would hold of the "imaginal" 
aspect of experience. Analytically sensations and images are 
not bare, simple, ultimate "thats" in their own right, but rather 
does their "thatness" — whatever may be the case with their 
"whatness" — arise as a result of the calling out of a definite 
type of functional response, originally instinctive, as Stumpf 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 99 

supposes, but later singled out by consciousness and at times, 
under certain conditions, as in the experience of correcting illu- 
sions and hallucinations, playing a part in conscious activity and 
control. 

The Intention of Buhler, the thing-quality of Woodworth, the 
pseudo-substance of Schultze, the "something" of Moore, — all 
these, then, may become distinguishable aspects of experience, 
accruing to experience through the functioning of certain definite 
attitudes. On the side of overt motor attitudes we have genetic- 
ally the instinctive attention response, later develop the differen- 
tiated attitudes which might be referred to as the perceptual, the 
imaginal, the conceptual, yes, the interrogative even. The 
psychical "correlates" of these are the different feelings of 
"thatness", the "reality" of the object of perception, the "ideality" 
of the object "merely thought of." The peculiar form of object- 
ivity, of thatness, which accrues to a "content", depends upon 
which one of these attitudes is functioning at the time. It may 
eventually be found that certain forms of mental malady are to 
be referred to the abnormal functioning of some of these atti- 
tudes ; that folie de dout, for instance, is to be characterized as the 
tendency of a particular one of these attitudes to be set off under 
conditions in which in normal persons other responses are habit- 
ually called out; furthermore, that the degree of suggestibility 
may depend upon the facility with which one of these attitudes 
may be replaced by another. 

Here we would appear to have the Funktion of Stumpf, the 
attitudes of Judd and Titchener functioning in such a way as to 
bring about a definite type of modification of consciousness, — 
these modifications being the different modes of thatness that 
arise in experience. We might be reminded in this connection of 
Stout's modes of being conscious of an object, 47 of Brentono, 7 and 
of Colvin's doctrine of attitudes as indicated in his book on The 
Learning Process. 2 * 

And now, what shall we do with these attitudes? Shall we 
follow Titchener and Colvin in their method of dealing with them, 
i.e., analyze them into "sensations", or shall we follow Stumpf in 



ioo CARL RAHN 

denying that the Funktion can thus be stated adequately in terms 
of sensory ultimates. Or shall we go a little farther in another 
direction with Buhler, Ogden, Woodworth, Schultze, and others, 
and proceed to hypostatize the objectivity, thingliness, Intention, 
that accrue to experience as a result of the functioning of these 
various attitudes, and make of them structural elements? 

Let us revert for a moment to Stumpf's position. While the 
Funktion was for him "immediately given" it was, nevertheless, 
not a content category like his phenomena. And its correlate, the 
Gebilde, likewise was not a new content. Now if the "concep- 
tual judgment" concerning the "presence or existence of the part 
noted", of which Stumpf speaks, be the correlate of a Funktion, 
then it is not to be conceived of, in terms of Stumpf's system, as 
a new content but as a Gebilde.. And furthermore, if we are 
justified in interpreting the instinctive positing of which Stumpf 
speaks, as the primitive unconscious Funktion that is genetically 
basic to the overt conscious judgment, then the "thatness" aris- 
ing in unreflective experience, the unquestioning acceptance of 
the reality of the "presentation", insofar as it constitutes this 
presentation a "that" which stands over against us, also cannot 
be conceived of as a new "content". Thus the various modes of 
objectivity would not be, for Stumpf, new structural categories of 
static ultimates. If we have been at all successful in our identifica- 
tion of the Funktion of Stumpf with the "attitude" of certain 
American psychologists, then we believe, that at least in this he is to 
be identified more narrowly with the American functionalists in 
that he does not favor the hypostization of certain modifications 
accruing to consciousness as a result of the operation of the 
Funktionen. And, we believe that the various modes of objective 
reference will eventually be traced back to the functioning of 
certain typical attitudes or Funktionen. To hypostatize these 
"feelings" of thingliness, of objectivity, as independent struc- 
tural "non-sensory elements", will result in the end in a psy- 
chology as disjointed as the structural sensationalism which those 
who proceed thus are seeking to overcome. To add another 
structural element to already existing structural elements does not 
overcome the difficulty. 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 101 

XXXII 

It appears, then, that the "sensation" stands over against us, 
can be "inspected", because in a complex activity it has been 
placed over against us, — our attitude constitutes it an object. Yet 
here lies a subtle difficulty that arises in connection with Locke's 
problem. For the normal perceptual consciousness the "qualities" 
and the "objectivity" are given in a unity. There is no question 
of "is it or is it not an object?" in the thousand and one per- 
ceptual experiences of the day. It is only on rare occasions that 
the mind distinguishes twixt "qualities" and "thingliness." The 
various modes of objectivity, perceptual, imaginal, etc., need but 
seldom be abstracted and reflected upon, unless, for experimental 
purposes, or mayhap when we have become subjects in need of a 
psychotherapist. Yet, nevertheless, in the normal human indi- 
vidual they do eventually come to be distinguished, and the 
psychologist may ultimately discover the machinery of the overt 
judgment mentioned by Stumpf, getting his lead from such 
experiences as that in which we wittingly "try on" various atti- 
tudes in concrete situations where conditions are such as to favor 
ambiguity. Locke, however, did not follow this trail else he 
would have come upon the attitudes or Funktionen underlying 
the various forms of objectivity. He chose to follow another and 
thus came to postulate, as does Buhler after him, an "idea of 
substance" that is derived neither from sensation nor reflection. 
His method appears to have grown out of another mode of 
pre-scientific procedure which we have already had occasion to 
mention in another connection, viz., the method by which not the 
attitude is abstracted, but the type of objectivity that is experi- 
enced through the functioning of various attitudes. In other 
words he abstracted not the Funktion, but the "correlate" of it 
which in Buhler's scheme becomes pure thought : Intention. The 
method is that of the child that delights in staring fixedly as some 
word upon the page in order to get the strangely mystical experi- 
ence of "losing" its meaning ; then singling out a letter and losing 
its meaning, and after some time spent in losing meaning after 



102 CARL RAHN 

meaning, he finally emerges once more to take up his normal 
activities, yet feeling the awe of the little mystic who says : 

"I know something more 

Than just a moment ago, 
I know something more — 

I wonder what I know?" 

Our thought psychologist believes that he, too, "knows some- 
thing more", viz: that "thatness", "objectivity", the feeling of 
"something", may continue to be "given" even after all the sensory 
"qualities" have been abstracted from the "object". These quali- 
ties, he finds, may change, yet the object may remain the same. 
Having abstracted from all the sensory qualities he finds that 
the "thatness" persists. He now attempts to account for this 
"thatness", and finds that since he believes that all that is "given" 
him is the qualities, he must assume a "substance" in which they 
inhere in order to constitute them a "thing". Hence Locke's 
"vague idea" of substance, gotten neither through sensation nor 
reflection, his only sources of knowledge. From the point of view 
gradually developing in contemporary psychology Locke is per- 
haps building better than he knows when he attributes this vague 
idea to "custom". We need not accept the implication that genet- 
ically there are first the "qualities" and then the gradual develop- 
ment of the "objects" through "custom" ; but say, rather, that the 
thingliness is the function of the instinctive attitude that the 
biological form assumes with reference to the stimulus. Thus 
the "custom" in question becomes not an individual but a racial 
habit.* 

But having succeeded in abstracting the "qualities" from the 
"that", we must not commit the error that James repeatedly 
warns us against of assuming that the original unanalyzed ex- 
perience is the sum of these two hypostatized abstractions : The 
one "sensory", the other "non-sensory" or pure thought. Buhler 
and the other thought psychologists who make the Intention a 

* Our Lockeian, however, might balk at this point, for fear lest he come 
dangerously near the bugaboo of "innate ideas." 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 103 

static non-sensory element are using a method of procedure 
identical with that of Locke. With such a procedure the "quali- 
ties", the simple "ideas of sensation", acquire a thatness of their 
own as sensations, and this thatness is other than that of the 
unanalyzed experience of normal perception. The "qualities" are 
some of the meanings that may be successively shelled off from 
the Ding-an-sich. In making the sensations elements they retain 
this conceptual thatness of quality and only so can they be 
characterized as "standing over against us" with a thatness of 
their own, yet independent of the thatness of the substrate in 
which they are supposed to inhere.' — We have here a suggestion 
toward a statement in psychological terms of the problem : How 
does the mind know its object; which psychological statement 
might possibly be found to point the way toward a workable 
metaphysical statement. 

Buhler and others are quite consistent in carrying out the 
Lockeian analysis to its logical conclusion. If our aim is to 
analyze the percept into its "elements", and we are satisfied to 
make of the qualities sensory elements, then it is only just to 
make the "vague idea of substance" another element. Yet in 
proceeding thus the "sensationalist" and those who find the 
"imageless thought" are alike following the method that, whether 
it be admitted or not, grows out of a conception of consciousness 
as an entity of which the "sensations" constitute a part. Having 
conceptually created the sensation entities, we question the 
"power" of the "sensations" to fuse and to constitute an object. 105 
But to proceed forthwith to create another sort of entity that is 
to fuse them, as Woodworth does, for instance, leaves us still 
with a disjointed experience. The difficulty is that the "mere 
sensation" is for them an entity already, but not the same entity 
as the colored sounding hard object that compels our attention. 
But to create another non-sensory "thatness" gives us not the 
fused, unified, mental experience of normal perception, but the 
state of mind of the philosopher, facing the problem of the 
relation of the "qualities" to the Ding-an-sich. 

It would appear, therefore, that Buhler' s Intention is, as he 



IQ4 CARL RAHN 

claims, truly a distinguishable characteristic of every actual con- 
scious experience. We saw that the type of Intention, of thatness, 
may be very various indeed. But if it should be found that the 
whole of conscious life always divulges this "ever-present" aspect 
of objective reference, for which Brentano 8 contended nearly 
forty years ago, then Biihler is doing contemporary psychology 
good service in insisting that investigation be directed upon it. 
Granting this universality for the nonce, with what current con- 
cepts of psychology will it be found to have elements in common ? 
Are we lead to correlate the "thatnesses" with the focus or foci of 
consciousness? Does the focusing constitute objectivity? Are 
the various "thats" felt as different by reason of the functioning of 
different attitudes within the total activity? In how far are 
these different "feels" of thatness, which we are now discovering, 
comparable with the "modes of being conscious of an object" of 
Stout? 

Chiefest of all the service that has been rendered us by the 
"thought psychologists", among whom Biihler, beyond a doubt, 
has been the most active and heroic, is this : It forces us to face 
the question as to what constitutes our concept of sensation and 
its relation to the other psychological categories. Not the question 
of the presence of "non-sensory elements" is first to be decided, 
but rather must the psychologist first consider the question of the 
meaning of "sensory" and of "element". 



XXXIII 

If the "thatness" of the sensation accrues to it by reason of the 
functioning of a specific attitude, Funktion, or Bewusstseinslage, 
then it must be stated not as a peculiarly inherent characteristic 
but as one that is derived. And what about the other "attributes", 
— are they inseparable, ever-present aspects of an ultimate, 
"given" sensation element? 

We have cited those who would demur at the rigidity of the 
interpretation of the concept that, as was pointed out, continues 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 105 

to bear the marks of its origin in connection with a conception 
of the nature of mind that makes sensation a relatively static, 
"meaningless" factor in experience. We have cited Kiilpe as 
proclaiming the possibility of abstract Vorstellungen in "actual 
consciousness", and relegating the sensation of the inseparable 
attributes to a nether-world of "psychic reality". A suspicion is 
arising whether sensation is to be adequately stated in terms of 
the old definition. May it not be that the sensory attributes may 
themselves be found to be not ultimate, but developments in a 
complex process? Like all individual meanings the sensory 
quales as experienced are developments in an organic system of 
meanings, a growth within the individual's experience. 

Kiilpe points out that the form or pattern of the sensory stimu- 
lation may be reacted to by consciousness to the exclusion of other 
sensory attributes. Angell points out that on the side of the 
development of the individual mind grossly different forms are 
reacted some time before qualitative discriminations are made. 
This would be the genetic statement of that which Kiilpe notes. 
If we consider the conscious experiences involved in these reac- 
tions noted by Kiilpe and Angell as sensory, then the sensation- 
alist must admit that it here possesses a character very different 
from that of those other experiences into which the qualitative 
distinctions have entered in. 

So far as consciousness is concerned, the attributes come into 
being within the actual experience of the individual only at the 
moment that a discriminative reaction occurs. 

Human faces, for most of us, are perhaps among the most 
interesting of objects. The mobility of the nostrils, the fine 
lines about the eyes, the sensitiveness of the mouth, the depth of 
the eyes, — all these are the basis of the subtle differences in our 
reactions with reference to our fellows. And all this is mediated 
by visual stimulation. We may have thought that we were 
fairly familiar with these impressions. Yet on a day we wander 
into a portrait gallery, perhaps it is our first time there, and as 
we look at the pictures a sense of strangeness comes over us. 
These are not like the faces of real life — never were there such 



106 CARL RAHN 

deep shadows on any human face. We go out upon the street 
and peer into the faces of the men and women that pass us — yes, 
the painter was right. And henceforth the faces about us come to 
have for us an added richness of meaning. Now if color tint be 
accredited a sensation attribute, then the doctrine of the sensa- 
tion element that comes into being always and only with all its 
attributes must make its peace with the facts. Schultze points out 
that the artist sees various tints and hues where the layman sees 
naught but white snow. 45 In Pillsbury's words the layman might 
be said to experience the "type". 44 Again, in glancing at a brass 
vase one does not always perceive the distribution of light and 
shade, but as in the case of the human face percept, mentioned 
above, the color of the surface is often perceived as "all of a 
piece". 

Another case in point : The teacher of introductory psychology 
has every opportunity to study the process by which the attribute 
of "saturation" comes home to the consciousness of his students. 
He will get from them the surprised remark that this has changed 
their whole consciousness of color. Others have vaguely "felt" it, 
but it had not been quite able to come clearly to consciousness. 
Others never can "see" it. Surely Kiilpe's distinction between 
conscious actuality and psychic reality is a most useful one at this 
point for taking cognizance of the facts of difference that we 
note here. If the "real sensations" are the same throughout, well 
and good — let those who need it take comfort in the thought — 
but the actual consciousness, the consciousness of our world of 
thinking 43 and aiming and striving, is very different not only 
on the side of mere character but also on the side of control, after 
the discrimination has been made. The newly discovered attri- 
bute is definitely a function of the complex attitude into which 
we sought to bring our student by means of our similes and sug- 
gestions in figurative speech. And having succeeded in bringing 
the meaning home to him means just this : the enrichment of his 
experience by this new mode of conscious reaction upon visual 
stimuli ; and the method by which it is acquired is essentially the 
same as that by which we are led to acquire any other new con- 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 107 

scious reaction — as when one attempts to put another into that 
attitude which will make possible for him the noting of the hidden 
figures in the ambiguous drawing. 

Now, either this attribute of saturation was always a part of 
the student's actual conscious experience and that of color tint 
always involved in the perception of human faces — in which case 
it must be shown how these attributes were involved, whether 
marginally or "sub-consciously" or as neural activity merely; or 
else they come into existence as conscious experience in that first 
discriminative reaction with reference to them. 

If we take this latter point of view, the "sensation" as a fact of 
consciousness must be stated as a development within the individ- 
ual's experience which is enriched only gradually by distinctions 
of sensory attributes. Genetic considerations lead us to note the 
necessity of discarding the definition of sensation as a sum of 
fixed inseparable "attributes", a definition that has been taken 
over unquestioned from certain philosophical systems. Sensory 
consciousness is no simpler than, but equally as complex as, any 
other type of consciousness and the laws of its coming and going 
are the same as those for the rise of any other form. 

If we take even the simplest of our sensory experiences, we 
shall find always that it can be adequately stated not in terms of a 
bare "what", but that it involves a complex reactive process to 
make it what it "is". Schultze tells us that the "whiteness" of 
the perception of the snow may be not sensory but "conceptual". 45 
The "thatness" of the quality also is, as we have seen, not as 
Stumpf and Stout 48 would have it, a matter of inherent objectiv- 
ity, but as our analysis leads us to believe, likewise a function of 
the total situation in terms of which the sensory experience, as 
Angell puts it, can alone be described. We have noted that the 
process by which an "attribute" of visual experience comes to 
consciousness for the first time, is a complex process, and our 
account is very like that which Moore gives of the hypothetical 
rise of one of his non-sensory categories. 42a Our similes, our 
circumscriptions, our figurative speech, were essential factors in 
creating a situation for our student that made possible for him 



108 CARL RAHN 

the experience of the saturation aspect. To use the terms of 
Moore, what we really created was an imageless category to 
which the data of sense experience are assimilated. 41 For it is 
these new attitudes that constitutes essentially one of the non- 
sensory elements of the thought psychologists. When therefore 
the thought psychologist postulates a "new element" he is attempt- 
ing to overcome an inherent difficulty that he is coming to feel 
with reference to stating consciousness in structural terms. But 
the difficulty does not lie as he supposes in the insufficiency of the 
traditional number of "ultimate" structural elements with which 
he has hitherto operated, but rather in the fact that he is trying 
to operate with "ultimate" structural elements at all. 



XXXIV 

If the sensations be not simple structural "ultimates" of con- 
sciousness, we return to our question : How did the conception 
have its rise?' — For the early philosophers of the modern period 
the problem of knowledge was dominant. How does the mind 
know the world? The mental objects were given in terms of 
sensory qualities ; they were "impressions" of the real object upon 
the tabula rasa of the mind. Permutation and combination of 
the "simple ideas" gained in sense impression, give rise to all 
other "ideas of sensation." Then there are certain phases within 
the process of permutation and combination which may momen- 
tarily become "objects" in themselves and we have as a result 
those other "ideas of reflection", ideas of conscious activities. 
But always the "ideas of sensation" are fundamental. 

Thus sensation was an ultimate genetic category. Through this 
gateway all knowledge comes to us, and thus the philosopher 
was able to lay low the hobgoblin of "innate ideas". To be able 
to proclaim that there are no "innate ideas", but that all knowl- 
edge rests upon sensation, gave tremendous satisfaction to the 
empiricists. Soon the genetic category, however, developed into a 
content category. For Hume "qualities" are the only elements of 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 109 

cognitive consciousness. The subsequent gradual development of 
this conception of sensation as a structural category is an impor- 
tant item in the history of empirical psychology. 

Under the influence of physiological considerations the "im- 
pressions" of Locke and Hume cease to partake of the nature of 
"copy" of external objects and become essentially the conscious 
correlate of the physical stimulation of end organs, or of the re- 
vival of cerebral activity underlying past sensory experience. Yet 
the influence of the "impression" theory still continues to be felt 
in that the "sensation" and "image" is a real "item" of the 
experience toward which the sensory stimulation contributes. 
But another determining factor is that of Kantian philosophy. 
In so far as we have in our contemporary definition of sensation 
the item of "meaninglessness", 42 80 we note the influence of 
idealistic philosophy with its distinction twixt sense and under- 
standing.* 

Arriving at the conception of Wundt and Titchener we find 
that the sensation and image element is not the total mass of 
sensory impression, or its revived image, as represented by the 
"ideas" of Locke. These latter are conceived as "compounds" 
of "complexes" that are to be analysed into "elements". These 
elements then come to be minutely studied in isolation and thus we 
Have attained to that massive body of knowledge on the psychol- 
ogy of the senses. We may say that the sensationalists have been 
fairly consistent in their structuralistic procedure. Actuated as 
they are by the motive to trace consciousness back to its source 
in sense, they attempt to analyze all cognitive consciousness into 
component "sensations" and "images." Whatever we may say 
concerning the nature of these as "ultimates", the structural 
analysis may be regarded as legitimate only in so far as we always 
bear in mind that when we say that an experience is analysable 
into these and these "sensations", we can thereby mean only that 
the sensory stimulation now mediating these "sensations," and 
the cortical excitations underlying the "images" now in conscious- 
ness under conditions of introspective analysis, — that this sensory 
stimulation and these cortical excitations were functioning as a 
* See above, Section XXIII. 



no CARL RAHN 

unity in the experience that was held up for analysis, in such a 
way as to contribute toward that peculiar experience of the con- 
scious attitude of doubt, or the unified percept, in the actual 
consciousness of just a moment ago. In so far as this position 
is taken, the analytic psychologist, until he finds good grounds for 
abandoning this method, is justified in "dissecting" actual con- 
sciousness into "sensations." And all the while he can do justice 
to the fact that actual consciousness appears often to have but 
little in common with the sensation of the inseparable attributes. 
But the moment he maintains that the attitude or percept is in 
any way the sum of these sensations of the inseparable attributes 
as actual conscious "processes," one must enter demurer. For 
it would pledge us to the doctrine of static conscious elements, — 
static, no matter how much we may protest that they are "pro- 
cesses". Actual consciousness cannot be thus conceived. 

Hume, however, was the point of departure not only for 
empirical sensationalism, but also, through Kant, whom he had 
awakened from "dogmatic slumber," for quite another movement 
in philosophy, that in its turn has influenced psychology. The 
"sense impressions" of Hume became the phenomena of Kant. 
Over against these was the Reason that manipulated the phe- 
nomena. The "real objects" of Locke became for Kant the 
noumena, that underlie the phenomena. Kant, to be sure, 
despaired of the possibility of an empirical psychology, but his 
influence is clearly manifest in the psychological trend that we 
are considering here. It is the activity character of conscious- 
ness that occupies attention to-day. That this very aspect that 
Kant despaired of seeing attacked by empirical methods, is also 
the very one that the thought psychologists are grappling with, is 
evidenced by Biihler's remark after the following citation from 
Kant : "This schematizing on the part of our intellect is an art 
hidden in the depths of the human soul ; and it is hardly probable 
that we shall ever discover and lay bare this knack of nature." 
Hereupon Buhler says: "It is evident that Kant has allowed 
empirical considerations to enter in, and if we continue them 
systematically, then we need not despair of our problem; it may 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY in 

prove difficult, but we certainly shall discover and lay bare 
these 'knacks' (of nature)." 16 For Kant, we saw, there were 
two fundamental categories : sense and understanding. Through 
sense the phenomena are given : through the understanding, the 
meanings. How these came into being and how they functioned, 
Kant despaired of ever discovering. Yet after him, we note 
his influence in certain developments in contemporary psychology. 
The Funktionen of Stumpf, the "acts" of Brentano, and the con- 
ceptual categories and meanings that arise as a result of the 
operations of these, still bear the marks of their derivation, 
historically, from Kant's system. 

In so far as the thought psychologist adheres to the Kantian 
ordering of the categories, we run little danger of developing a 
new structural "thought element." "Thought," for Kant, is an 
activity, not a static given like the phenomena. In Stumpf, for 
the most part, there is logical consistency in this respect. But 
the psychologist with this philosophical bias has been trained in 
the analytic structural psychology of the sensationalists. Now 
the phenomenal mind of the sensationalist, no matter how much 
he may protest to the contrary, is a somewhat that is to be dis- 
sected into its elements. He has learned to note some of these 
elements and has discovered much about their characteristics, 
and it is in terms of these characteristics that he has defined them. 
Thus the realm of phenomena has been minutely explored and 
the results of the exploration taken up into the definition of the 
elements. Yet all the while, the mind of the thought psycholo- 
gist is occupied with his heart's desire, to understand the working 
of the actual mind. But Kant himself had despaired of ever 
knowing that, except by its results, and so one continues to labor 
in the vineyard of the sensationalist. Analyse, analyse, analyse ; 
state this, that, and the other formation, as colligation, as fusion, 
or as assimilation, if you will; but above all things, analyse them. 
So, like little Johannes of the Quest, they kept at it. But, as 
with Johannes, a suspicion arises in them that what they are 
finding under these conditions will not lead them to their heart's 
desire : the understanding of the working of actual consciousness. 



ii2 CARL RAHN 

They occasionally make faint attempts at piecing together the 
phenomenal elements, to compare them with the original experi- 
ence, — but that is a violation of the prescribed method. 

Yet finally they take courage, and rise in open revolt. The 
spell is broken, and they secede. They call the domain of the 
master in whose vineyard they toiled in weary captivity, the 
realm of Psychic Reality. Their own territory they call Con- 
scious Actuality. And now they set to work. But what will they 
do for a method ? 

Trained so long in the school of the sensationalist, it is small 
wonder that they take over much the same system of habits, and 
much of the conceptual machinery developed there. The sensa- 
tionalist takes his "given" experience, the percept or the attitude, 
and holds it up ; he now has a new mental state in which he finds 
sensations of special sense, kinaesthesis, etc. He may conclude 
that the sensory stimulations and cortical excitations that now 
mediate these sensations and images, when functioning in the 
original state were to be correlated in part with the conscious- 
ness of percept or attitude. The tendency, we saw, is often to go 
a step farther, however, and to commit the fallacy of saying that 
not only this sensory stimulation and cortical excitation, but 
rather also the elements of the inseparable attributes presumably 
now mediated by this neural activity, were also present. We 
forget that the "sensation" and "image" are partly a function of 
the neural activity of a different cortical system than was involved 
in the percept that was called out a moment ago in response to 
the same physical stimulation, which percept we held up and 
"analysed." 

Now some of the thought psychologists are just as prone to 
fall into this error as is the sensationalist. Following accepted 
methods they take, say, a perceptual experience, and ostensibly 
try to discover any sensations or images that answer the struc- 
tural sensationalist's definition of the "sensation element." Thus 
they continue to regard actual consciousness as being capable of 
a static, structuralistic analysis. And now they do what they did 
not dare do under the old regime : They take, or try to take, the 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 113 

"sensations" and "images" that were analysed out and compare 
them with the feel of the original experience or one that they 
believe to be like it. The result is that they discover that over 
and above the "sensations" and "images" there is "something 
more", and that is the "non-sensory" element. The method by 
which this is obtained is interesting: Take three persons, segre- 
gate them, stimulate each with a tonal stimulus. As a result you 
must say that there were three sensations experienced. But put 
the three sensations into the same consciousness and you have not 
only these three sensations but something over and above them : 
you have a clang or a chord. Again, take three lines, you can 
experience them separately in certain definite positions and you 
have simply "lines"; but experience them together, in the same 
positions as before, and you have not only the three lines but 
over and above these: the "triangle." The form-quality is the 
"non-sensory" component. Or again: given a melody in a 
certain key; then the same melody in another key. There is a 
common "element." So far as "sensations" are concerned the 
two experiences are wholly unlike. But they have something in 
common : the "form." This, then, must be something over and 
above the sensations. 

Where the sensationalist, having analysed, ostensibly stopped 
short, the thought psychologist does not stop, but approaches his 
"original experience" of "actual consciousness" and compares the 
products of his analysis with the original. He notes a difference. 
This difference is postulated as "thought element." 

Had the first philosopher of this attitude of mind — shall we 
call him Plato? — stopped short where the sensationalist stops, 
and then had no one after him dared to depart from his example, 
we should to-day have no "thought element" to combat. But it 
so happens that this first one did do the wicked deed, and since 
then there are those who follow his example and attempt to tally 
their analysis by some form of synthesis or reconstruction, and 
always there is "something more." As to method, the sensa- 
tionalist analyses and seeks to explain in terms of "body- 
processes"; the other analyses and then attempts some form of 



ii4 CARL RAHN 

reconstruction. And as a result of his attempt at reconstruction 
he discovers that somehow, in the first analysis he overlooked an 
"element". But having found it, he henceforth knows enough to 
look for it at once and sure enough, it is always there. 

Thus far this factor of form, pattern, plan, meaning, has been 
considered only as it is supposed to appear as a "funded content" 
in connection with other, sensory, elements. But one day 
our thought psychologist comes along and finds that the 
sensations of the inseparable attributes are not always dis- 
coverable, yet the lamp of thought burns bright as ever. Sen- 
sations and images sometimes occur, but they are as "sparks struck 
off from thought in its progress rather than thought itself" 100 
and they "hinder rather than further thought." All that there is 
in consciousness is "thought," which is quite unlike the meaning- 
less sensation or image of the inseparable attributes as defined 
by psychology as a science. Actual consciousness, he concludes, 
may therefore operate without "sensory" material. No longer is 
there need of stopping to analyse in order to find the sensations 
and images ; when they do appear they are known for what they 
are, and then, for the most part, they are a nuisance. 

Thus our thought psychologist, when he turns from conscious- 
ness as sensation-mongering and image-mongering, to conscious- 
ness as problem-solving, decides that consciousness is not made of 
"image-stuff" but is essentially of the nature of "thought-stuff." 

This then, is the account of the rise of the "sensation ele- 
ment" and of the "thought element." Both of them are due to a 
conception of consciousness as a somewhat that is capable of 
static analysis, a somewhat that is constituted of part contents 
which are to be described "as they are, existentially." That the 
sensationalist, however, discovers but one class of cognitive ele- 
ments whilst the thought psychologist discovers two, is due, as 
we have seen, to a difference in their methods of procedure. 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 115 

XXXV 

Our thought psychologist concludes that there are two modes 
of representation: one imaginal; the other reingedanklich, pure 
thought. Buhler tells us that he can think a specific blue object in 
two definite ways, first in terms of a visual image of the blue, 
and then in terms of a purely unanschaulicher Gedanke, and that 
the second is just as definite as the first. 13 — Now if an observer 
should be found who only rarely has visual imagery and whose 
auditory imagery is dependent in large measure upon the motor 
factor involving the vocal organs as a provocative, — the visual 
image being a rarely occurring phenomenon and evincing a pro- 
found emotional response owing to its great unusualness and the 
auditory imagery being bound up with the motor factor so that it 
is seldom a free rising image, (and yet with all this the person 
takes a keen delight in music and art presentations, but neverthe- 
less finds it well-nigh impossible to recall in terms of auditory or 
visual representation) — if such an observer should be found, we 
would verily have a case of one who must and does refer to the 
objects of his world in the manner that Buhler subsumes under 
the head of imageless thought. But if such a one should maintain 
that his whole conscious life is shot through with kinaesthetic ex- 
perience — that every attempt to introspect precipitates such experi- 
ence — that the meaning as kinaesthetic imagery often comes just 
as near to the surface of the stream of thought as the meaning 
of auditory in an auditory idea, — then for such a one it could not 
be maintained that his thought was any more non-sensory or 
imageless than is the auditory idea. It is no more "mere" kinaes- 
thesis than is the auditory idea merely auditory imagery, for the 
moment it becames kinaesthesis the "thought" is gone. 

Our observer, we maintained, is almost wholly lacking in visual 
ideas, and auditory ideas are supported as it were by the motor 
factor of the vocal organs. But over and above this type of 
experience involving auditory factors, our observer maintains 
that there are others of another type, viz., just such 
cases as that of Buhler's example of imageless thought that was 
quite without "sensory" faqtors. There are certain definite 



n6 CARL RAHN 

spheres of thought, certain "areas" of experience that involve 
this type of activity. Indeed, our observer maintains that this 
mode of thinking is in certain situations of his daily life a most 
common occurrence during long stretches of time. In sooth, he 
would be characterized by the thought psychologist as an ex- 
treme example of "imageless" thinker. . . In human intercourse 
persons of this type experience much of what Lipps and his 
school appear to subsume under the term of Einfiihling. Their 
attention does not appear to apprehend primarily the visual presen- 
tation of another person before them, but rather his "very soul". 
They come away with little knowledge of the person's outer ap- 
pearance, but with a lively appreciation of his "inner life". The 
writer has taken some pains in questioning this type and he finds 
that many are surprised that not every one "knows" others in the 
same manner as they do. The other person is experienced "from 
the inside", as it were. There is a precipitant grasping of anoth- 
er's meaning and a reaction to it before the other has uttered a 
word. Such anticipation may at times approach close to the 
uncanny. To some, this revelation of the other's personality 
precipitates often a moral problem : is it right to look so deeply 
into the living reality of another's being, for the very fibre of the 
other's moral personality seems to be felt. The tendency "to 
put one's self in the other's place" is singularly marked in these 
persons. 

Now such a person, though he can summon no visual image of 
some particular blue under normal conditions, can still adequately 
refer to it in his thinking. He can bear witness to the absence 
from the experience of all "irrelevant images" with their insepar- 
able attributes, and to the presence of all that Biihler claims for 
his "non-sensory" thought. There is definitely "whatness" and 
"thatness", — Wasbestimmtheit, and Intention. Indeed the that- 
ness aspect, the Intention, is often a most prominent aspect of the 
experience. 

In the case of such experiences like that of Biihler's example, 
the attempt to introspect reveals definitely a fleeting conscious- 
ness of motor attitudes that, he believes, as attitudes functioned in 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 117 

the thought by contributing especially towards the reference as- 
pect, the Intention. Whenever such attempts are made to hold 
up a memory experience in which the awareness of another's per- 
sonality is central, the liveliest of kinaesthetic imagery is precipi- 
tated. There is remarked an absence of imagery of the special 
senses, but there is vivid imagery of posture, of holding the 
head, of finer "feels" of characteristic movements of muscles of 
the face, especially of the lips and eyelids. 

When, in Kulpe's experiments, in the case of abstraction of 
pattern or form from the visual presentation in actual conscious- 
ness, the person is said to see actually only the form, and that 
quality is abstracted from, we have a case that may be placed 
alongside of the getting of the "meaning" of another's "person- 
ality" as a part of the immediate percept — as it were. Our 
observer, too, often can tell you nothing concerning the visual 
appearance of the person, there is often no immediate memory 
of the color of clothes, hair and eyes — in short no visual "image" 
to give these details. And yet our observer has the knack of 
pointing out aspects of character in another person that others 
have discovered only after long acquaintanceship. Our observer 
when attempting to hold up such an experience notes kinaesthetic 
imagery (which is not to be confused with visual images of 
movement or kinaesthetic sensations), and definitely emotional 
factors. 

On the side of mechanism, such a person cannot be "set" for 
the sensory aspect of visual experience at all, but the path of 
discharge appears to be mainly in a direct route away from 
the visual cortex to the kinaesthetic and motor areas ; this would 
appear to be the case especially when at some moments of ex- 
perience our observer almost "forgets" that he is not the other, 
but experiences with him, and is often actually "embarrassed" 
with the other, in a situation. It is small wonder that this mode 
of consciousness should appear to be more nearly allied to the 
nature of "thought stuff" and seemingly more intimately "psy- 
chical" than imagery of special sense. It appears to be peculiarly 
of the essence of "meaning". And when Woodworth 105 main- 



n8 CARL RAHN 

tains that the sensations are not the "meaning", that they rather 
"call out" the meaning, our observer believes that he knows what 
Woodworth is getting at. The visual image, in the case of 
individuals in whom it is common, may be as "irrelevant" to the 
meaning as is the visual "sensation" in the case of the perception 
of another's "inner life" on the part of our observer. The "sensa- 
tions" for Woodworth, call out the "meaning". Now it appears 
that in so far as consciousness is concerned, the visual character- 
istics of the person are not noted by our observer at all ; all that 
is "there" in consciousness is the "meaning". For our observer 
on the side of recall, however, the visual factor drops out almost 
completely excepting in so far as the "feel" of its having been 
originally a visual experience may be present as an "attitude" 
(which is not a subtle, vague thing for the person of this type, 
but often a very actual conscious experience, of the kinaesthetic 
type). Woodworth's observer would not appear to be of the 
extreme type that gets the "meaning" alone when perceiving a 
person, and in whose consciousness the visual aspect is abstracted 
from often almost completely. And on the side of recall, also, 
it may be found that variations occur. Woodworth's observer, 
when he "thinks" of the person, might get the visual aspect along 
with the meaning; our observer maintains that the visual image 
does not enter in. There may be also another difference on the 
side of recall. The whole organization of the extreme kinaesthe- 
tic type appears to be that to "call up" an experience, a thought 
complex, the initial process is always a certain "attitude" that 
then "brings up" the "thought" ; it may well be that for Wool- 
worth's observer the recall is via the image of special sense which 
is necessary to call up the "meaning." 

Biihler appears to regard all thought which he does not believe 
to be re-presentative but representative, as "imageless," and all 
"imagery" that he does not believe to be re-presentative as "ir- 
relevant." 27 Yet it may well be that the kinaesthetic type of 
activity is just as re-presentative for some persons as the visual 
is for others. And when Biihler does note just such phases of 
experience that the introspective purpose occasionally loses from 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 119 

the relations in which it is occurring, he shows the operation of 
the fallacy that we pointed out in our discussion of method. He 
says : "And if, in the case of such experiences which might be 
expressed by such words as 'but' or 'or' or 'nevertheless', there 
is a feeling as if I were going from something at my right to 
something at my left, or from something in front of me to 
something back of me — one surely would not wish in all serious- 
ness to generalize upon this fact of experience in the form of a 
conclusion that the real conscious correlate of these ideational 
continuities is to be sought in these sensory elements." 10 Biihler 
here proceeds as do all those who conceive consciousness as a 
"substance" to be statically analysed. He assumes that sensations 
are "real items" of experience, entities, that may float upon the 
surface of consciousness, but do not constitute its essense. Its 
essence is another entity : Gedanken. 

Let us bear in mind the point that we arrived at as a result of 
our inquiry: that the mistake of both the analytic sensationalist 
and that of the analytic thought psychologist is often that they 
forget that the conscious moment is as much a function of the 
"modified cortex" as of the specific character of the inducing 
stimulus. If, however, a conscious experience is to be character- 
ized as "sensory" on the score that when the shift to the intro- 
spective purpose takes place, we find certain "sensations" and 
"images" present, and if we proceed on the hypothesis that we 
may infer that a part of the nervous mechanism that is supposed 
to be involved in this activity of analytic experience was function- 
ing also in the interrupted experience — if such an experience of 
"actual" normally functioning consciousness is to be characterized 
as "sensory", — on this score, then, those very aspects of experi- 
ence that the thought psychologist characterizes as essentially 
"non-sensory", must be put in the same category as the seem- 
ingly more patently sensory re-presentative experiences harking 
back to the functioning of the organs of special sense. 



120 CARL RAHN 

XXXVI 

When Titchener characterizes the thought psychology as being 
guilty of reflection, 93 it might legitimately retort that it is no 
more and no less reflective than structural sensationalism. 

The various forms of mental activity, imagination, percep- 
tion, judgment, etc., as mental activities are supposed to have a 
different "feel", yet the unreflective person may never have be- 
come aware of these subtle differences; and only upon reflection 
does he become conscious that there is such a difference between 
the "feel" of the percept, and that of the thought, whether 
imaginal or "pure", still referring to the same object the mo- 
ment he turns his back upon it. It is only when he begins to 
question the status of the two "objects" that the attitudes come 
to consciousness in some way. Do the "feels" of these attitudes 
have any sort of existence before we begin to reflect or question 
with regard to them? Would we have to assign to them "psy- 
chic reality" until reflection sets in and brings them into con- 
scious actuality? 

This much appears to be true: Reflection, not necessarily 
psychological reflection, does bring to pass the awareness of 
differences in the "feels" of the attitudes. It is only at those 
stages in individual development at which changes or conflicts in 
attitudes occur that we become aware of them, — that we become 
conscious of the difference of the "feel" of the attitudes, and 
this precipitation into consciousness upon further reflection may 
again be operative in bringing about changes in the "feel" of 
other attitudes. 

But this process of increasing the richness of the feels of at- 
titudes need not have its source in scientific psychological reflec- 
tion, for there are precipitations of attitudes into consciousness 
prior to the stage of reflection. In the actual normal develop- 
ment of the individual sudden changes and conflicts in emotional 
and purposive attitudes occur, which force the distinction be- 
tween them home upon him. Paul on the road to Damascus "saw 
a great light." This made a different man of him on the side of 
overt behavior; but chiefest of all let us note that it is at the 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 121 

point of such sudden changes that the attitudes are themselves 
precipitated into consciousness, and whatever may have been their 
status before, they now have a conscious meaning or "feel." In 
this sense Paul's inner experience is just this much richer than 
that of the "born" saint, whose mature attitude is the product of 
a gradual development. This then as an example of a conflict 
or sudden change in attitudes precipitating both into conscious- 
ness. The earlier attitudes may have served a function within 
the life activity of the organism, but they were not experienced 
as conscious attitudes. So much for attitudes coming to con- 
sciousness as a result of motor conflict. Generalized: attitudes, 
whether instinctive or habitual, are precipitated into conscious- 
ness at the point of sudden change or of conflict between them. 

Next we note that once the individual has attained to the level 
of reflection, it is through this reflective activity that changes are 
introduced into other instinctive and habitual attitudes. Inject 
reflective consciousness into instinctive and habitual modes of 
response and the activity that was unconscious, now becomes 
conscious and this coming to consciousness of the attitudes tends 
to change them, not merely by making them conscious, but in that 
the precipitation into consciousness tends to result in some read- 
justment within the co-ordinations constituting the habit or ac- 
tivity on the motor side. Reflection in a given case may make 
possible, say, the coming to consciousness of certain stimulations 
from the moving muscles of the legs in walking. The result is 
that an observer notes that we possess a "conscious walk." The 
act as overt motor occurrence is thereby changed. Among the 
attention attitudes, which on the physical side are perhaps the 
only types of acts that ought to be referred to as attitudes, we 
find that the development on the unreflective level has advanced 
far before elaborate reflection may enter in. We find various of 
these attitudes prevalent in subhuman reactions. "Doubt" and 
"belief", on our tentative hypothesis, would be originally mat- 
ters of overt attitude. It is only when conflicts occur, that the 
attitudes gradually become conscious attitudes, and it is in the 
refinement and differentiation that results from their becoming 



122 CARL RAHN 

conscious, that we must seek the beginnings of the elaborate 
differentiated attitudes that are involved in the complex activi- 
ties of the higher intellectual functions. 

Genetically our hypothesis would see in the most elaborate 
scientific attitude, — the holding of judgment in abeyance, the 
functioning of control factors, of regulative maxims — in all 
these we would see a gradual development that is a result of dif- 
ferentiation and re-coordination of primitive instinctive attitudes 
that develop at first primarily in the immediate response to peri- 
pheral stimulation, but soon differentiate also along lines of idea- 
tional activity. Children's "lies" (note quotation-marks), to cite 
the most notorious example, are referable, on this hypothesis, to 
the assumed fact that differentiation between the perceptual and 
the ideational attitude-complexes, has not gone on apace. Now 
reflection hastens the process of differentiation and reorganiza- 
tion at the point where, through it, the instinctive or habitual 
attitudes are precipitated into consciousness. The thought-psy- 
chologist necessarily becomes aware of subtle distinctions in 
attitudes of which he never before had become conscious. Such 
a precipitation becomes, willy-nilly we believe, the beginning of a 
reorganization just as truly as the injection of consciousness 
introduces change into the walking. 

Generalizing tentatively once more : not only does conscious- 
ness arise at the point of change or conflict in habitual attitudes, 
thus resulting in the precipitation of "feels" of the attitudes ; but 
furthermore the injection of consciousness into an ongoing 
habitual activity through "reflection", tends to change the ac- 
tivity. The "acts" of the Brentano school, the Funktionen of 
Stumpf, the "attitudes" of Judd and Titchener, the Bewusstseins- 
lagen of Mayer and Orth (Bewusstseinslagen are well defined 
by Biihler as a "consciousness of the thought process and espe- 
cially of the turning-points in this process, in the conscious ex- 
perience itself") 9 — all these might thus be said to have become 
definitized in the actual experience of the psychologist in the 
course of his reflections on the nature of thought and mental 
activity. Yet the beginnings of this conscious definition, leading 



TION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY \2$ 

i hypostatization, would lie genetically in the orig- 
ve attitudes as types of motor reactions within 
imental situations. So much for the genesis and 
conscious attitudes. Functionally and as "felt", 
is a product of the process of organizing going on 
physical organism. Both on the side of function 
us "feel" they develop partly under conditions of 
ange ; partly their elaboration is due to their being 
e organizing activity of consciousness. ... In other 
inctive motor attitudes are precipitated into con- 
:he point of conflict, and on the other hand the 
nto the organizing matrix of reflection tends to 

"attitude" as a conscious "feel" of activity is thus 
and not an "ultimate", what about the "sensation" ? 
>mit that just as an attitude becomes a conscious 
ling of activity, a conscious Funktion, a Bewusst- 
ir conditions when there occurs a conflict or sud- 
the side of unconscious motor attitudes, and just 
lay precipitate attitudes or habits of reacting into 
and thus enrich consciousness by specific "feels" 
: Funktion, or what not, so too, the enrichment 
£ of experience as sensory may occur through the 
►r successive operation of stimuli calling out differ- 
reactions. 

to construct a hypothetical world in which no light 
ian red were to act upon the retina, and if we were 
rom childhood in this hypothetical world, we may 
vhat sort of a visual consciousness would the child 
t would be his experience when suddenly a yellow 
ito his world ? What will our answer be ? For our 
veal our notion of consciousness, of mind, or what 
■ve that a getting together on such highly hypothe- 
cs this, would do much toward lifting the cloud of 
ing now patently existing amongst the various 
what sense is the redness the same before and after 



122 CARL RAHN 

conscious, that we must seek the beginnings of 
differentiated attitudes that are involved in the c 
ties of the higher intellectual functions. 

Genetically our hypothesis would see in the 1 
scientific attitude, — the holding of judgment in 
functioning of control factors, of regulative rr 
these we would see a gradual development that is ; 
ferentiation and re-coordination of primitive instir 
that develop at first primarily in the immediate re: 
pheral stimulation, but soon differentiate also alon^ 
tional activity. Children's "lies" (note quotation-r 
the most notorious example, are referable, on this 
the assumed fact that differentiation between the ; 
the ideational attitude-complexes, has not gone or. 
reflection hastens the process of differentiation ai 
tion at the point where, through it, the instinctr 
attitudes are precipitated into consciousness. Th< 
chologist necessarily becomes aware of subtle ( 
attitudes of which he never before had become coi 
a precipitation becomes, willy-nilly we believe, the 1 
reorganization just as truly as the injection of 
introduces change into the walking. 

Generalizing tentatively once more : not only d 
ness arise at the point of change or conflict in hab: 
thus resulting in the precipitation of "feels" of the 
furthermore the injection of consciousness into 
habitual activity through "reflection", tends to cl 
tivity. The "acts" of the Brentano school, the 1 
Stumpf, the "attitudes" of Judd and Titchener, the 
lagen of Mayer and Orth (Bewusstseinslagen an 
by Biihler as a "consciousness of the thought pro< 
daily of the turning-points in this process, in the 
perience itself") 9 — all these might thus be said to 
definitized in the actual experience of the psych< 
course of his reflections on the nature of though 
activity. Yet the beginnings of this conscious defir 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 123 

eventually to an hypostatization, would lie genetically in the orig- 
inally instinctive attitudes as types of motor reactions within 
certain environmental situations. So much for the genesis and 
the nature of conscious attitudes. Functionally and as "felt", 
their character is a product of the process of organizing going on 
in the psycho-physical organism. Both on the side of function 
and of conscious "feel" they develop partly under conditions of 
conflict and change ; partly their elaboration is due to their being 
caught up in the organizing activity of consciousness. ... In other 
words the instinctive motor attitudes are precipitated into con- 
sciousness at the point of conflict, and on the other hand the 
being drawn into the organizing matrix of reflection tends to 
change them. 

If then, the "attitude" as a conscious "feel" of activity is thus 
a development and not an "ultimate", what about the "sensation" ? 
We would submit that just as an attitude becomes a conscious 
attitude, a feeling of activity, a conscious Funktion, a Bewusst- 
seinslage, under conditions when there occurs a conflict or sud- 
den change on the side of unconscious motor attitudes, and just 
as reflection may precipitate attitudes or habits of reacting into 
consciousness and thus enrich consciousness by specific "feels" 
of activity, of Funktion, or what not, so too, the enrichment 
of the meaning of experience as sensory may occur through the 
simultaneous or successive operation of stimuli calling out differ- 
ent conscious reactions. 

If we were to construct a hypothetical world in which no light 
waves other than red were to act upon the retina, and if we were 
to be reared from childhood in this hypothetical world, we may 
ask ourselves what sort of a visual consciousness would the child 
have, and what would be his experience when suddenly a yellow 
is introduced into his world ? What will our answer be ? For our 
answer will reveal our notion of consciousness, of mind, or what 
not. We believe that a getting together on such highly hypothe- 
tical question as this, would do much toward lifting the cloud of 
misunderstanding now patently existing amongst the various 
"schools." In what sense is the redness the same before and after 



I2 4 CARL RAHN 

the introduction of the yellow light? Was there any conscious 
redness at all before the noting of the difference between the 
two lights? Did it exist in Kiilpe's psychic reality before the 
precipitation into conscious actuality ? Or will we say simply that 
the redness and the yellowness came into conscious existence at 
the same time? 

We would here revert to our analysis of the behavior of 
meanings. If this analysis was essentially sound, we conclude 
that in so far as it is dependent on objective stimulation, con- 
sciousness is aroused only at the point of differences, of change 
in that stimulation; if the objective stimulation remains constant, 
consciousness tends to subside. In so far as consciousness still 
continues to respond to the uniform stimulus, this is conditioned 
by a shift in the meanings evoked by the stimulus. As Angell 
has pointed out we must note always new aspects, new sides, new 
attributes of the object if we would keep it in consciousness. 2 If 
this statement has any justification, then, applied to our hypotheti- 
cal child, the redness would be born into consciousness only at 
the point of the introduction of the differing stimulation. Gen- 
eralized once more: the unfolding of experience as sensory 
would be a gradual development; each and every new discrim- 
ination thus induced by the introduction of new forms of stimula- 
tion, would tend to change the actual conscious experience of all 
the related "elements." 

Such a statement, if we may entertain it at all, even hypothetic- 
ally, would be supplemented by another, which we have touched 
upon also in our earlier attempt at analysis. Not only does con- 
sciousness appear to arise at the point of change in objective 
stimulation and tend to subside when habituation has set in ; but 
conversely; when reflective consciousness is injected into the 
sensory phase of experience, it tends to introduce changes therein. 
If we revert to our case of putting our student into an "attitude" 
that would enable him to discriminate the aspect of saturation, we 
have a case where reflective consciousness functions in bringing 
out the new aspect. The "attribute" becomes a function of the 
"attitude" which we create in the student by the use of similes 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 125 

and what not. In other words, the process of differentiation, 
begun at the point of change introduced into the objective stimu- 
lation, is continued with the rise of reflection, and thus the con- 
stitution of sensory experience as conscious becomes just as much 
a function of "reflection", as are the attitudes. And a psycholo- 
gist, interested in the activity phase of consciousness, might just 
as legitimately make the attitude the ultimate of experience instead 
of the sensation. Our analysis, however, tentative as it is, would 
lead us nevertheless to conclude that a more adequate grasp of 
the nature of human experience will be gained by a realization 
that neither the one nor the other is "ultimate." 



XXXVII 

With this, we would close our attempt at analysis of certain 
problems in contemporary psychology. . . . We have meandered 
along a devious path. . . . We have discovered bit by bit that it is 
verily true, as Titchener points out anew 31 that all consciousness 
is in continual flux. We have seen that observation of conscious- 
ness, from the point of view of a psychological purpose, inevitably 
introduces changes into the ongoing process. We saw also that 
the very changes that a psychological purpose introduces into 
the process, are of vital interest to the psychologist, for it is at 
this point that psychology may give to the life of to-day a con- 
tribution in the way of control analogous on the side of "inner" 
experience to the control given by the physical sciences on the 
side of "outer" experience. . . . The problem of the "actings" 
of the mind has come home to us anew, and calls for investiga- 
tion. Even though the psychologist should find that they are but 
"another way of looking at" what is "existentially" "one and the 
same process", this "other way" of looking at it may bring to 
light new facts about the "process". Is this awareness of the 
"actings" contemporaneous with the awareness of the "objects" ? 
Is it peculiarly marginal as compared with the percept, and must 
we therefore distinguish between the functions of the focal and 



126 CARL RAHN 

marginal consciousness? Questions such as these, along with 
the questions of meaning and purpose, will have to be faced 
squarely by a psychology that would do justice to the subtler 
aspects of consciousness. . . . We have seen, furthermore, that 
the attempt to get at consciousness "as it is, existentially" under 
the influence of a psychological purpose, is but one of many 
purposes that might give form and meaning to the incoming 
stimulations, and that the analysis of the "that" into sensations 
is the process that ensues normally when the more complex 
habitual interpretations prove inadequate. This is the normal 
method of "reconstituting the object". If the psychologist's sen- 
sations are artifacts, we may turn to consciousness in the con- 
crete and find there the prototype of the psychological analysis 
into sensations which yields not artifacts but actual control 
factors that have meaning in a concrete situation. When we can- 
not depend on our "knowledge" that we have really locked the 
door, we go back and try it; if it does not yield, we go away 
believing it to be locked; but if doubt assail us once more we 
return, place the key in the lock, open the door, then close it and 
turn the key, concentrating attention to the utmost upon the 
kinaesthetic and visual sensations that are to form the basis of 
our assurance that we have really locked the door. The response 
of consciousness to stimulation as "sensations", occurs under 
certain definite, problematic conditions, when other reactions, 
whether conscious or unconscious, fail. When his interpretation 
of the "world" fails the philosopher, he may come back to the 
"facts of sense" from which to construct the world anew, but he 
gets from sense only that which comports with his purpose and 
his problem. The psychologist's "sensation" is but one of many 
potential "contents" that might be aroused by the same objective 
source of stimulation. And when the stimulation is reacted to as 
a "sensation" it is the exigencies of the moment that determine 
what "aspect" of the sensation is to be reacted to. There is 
nothing sacrosanct in the union of the "attributes". . . . We have 
noted further that certain historic conceptions that have come 
down to us, stand in need of re-definition. There may be a 



SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 127 

wholesome efficacy in the scholastics' faith in the value of the 
unraveling of the implications of concepts. An historic analysis, 
coupled with an analysis of the concrete situations of human 
experience in which the current psychological concepts have their 
beginnings in the individual mind, is a method that may prove 
to make no mean contribution to our body of psychological 
knowledge. ... A host of problems has been stirred up and there 
is much labor ahead; nevertheless, the time would seem to cau- 
tion us to halt and re-examine the conceptions by means of which 
we would analyse and explain this somewhat, whether thing, or 
process, or function, that we call consciousness, — and then, 
having become clearly aware of the nature and the origin of* 
these conceptions, return to the task anew. 



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SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 129 

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130 CARL RAHN 

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SENSATION IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY 131 

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